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Sermons 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



By HUGH BLACK, M.A. 



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University Sermons 

The Gift of Influence 



BY 

HUGH BLACK 

JESUP PROFESSOR OF PRACTICAL THEOLOGY 
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1908, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

OCT 31 1908 

Copyright £n£y- Q 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 11 

The keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's 
hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; 
and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer 
of it. — Genesis xxxix. 22. 

II 

THE FAILURE OF GOD 22 

^ Howbeit I sent unto you all My servants the prophets, 
rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do 
not this abominable thing that I hate. But they 
hearkened not nor inclined their ear to turn 
from their wickedness. — Jeremiah xliv. 4. 



Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself 
overwise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? 
Be not overmuch wicked, neither be thou fool- 
ish: why shouldest thou die before thy time? — 
Ecclesiastes vii. 16. 



Neither make thyself overwise: why shouldest thou 
destroy thyself? — Ecclesiastes vii. 16. 

1 



III 



RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH 



33 



IV 



WISE OVERMUCH 



45 



CONTENTS 



v 



PAGE 



IS LIFE A BLESSING? 



57 



It had been good for that man if he had not been 
born. — St. Matthew xxvi. 24. 

VI 

HUMILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE .... 68 
For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every 
man that is among you, not to think of himself 
more highly than he ought to think; but to 
think soberly, according' as God hath dealt to 
every man the measure of faith. — Romans 
xii. 3. 

VII 

THE SOLITARINESS OF PRINCIPLE .... 79 
A certain people . . . and their laws are diverse 
from all people. — Esthee iii. 8. 



VIII 



THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 

The way of transgressors is hard. — Pbovekbs xiii. 



90 



15. 



IX 



SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION 

Then said I, Ah Lord God! they say of me, Is he not 
a speaker of parables? — Ezekiel xx. 49. R. V. 



101 



X 

CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY .... 
Speaking the truth in love. — Ephesians iv. 15. 



Ill 



CONTENTS 



3 



XI 

PAGE 

THE ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT . . .122 
And Esau said, Behold I am at the point to die: and 
what profit shall this birthright do to me? — 
Genesis xxv. 32. 

XII 

AN UNFINISHED LIFE . . . . . .132 

I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of 
my days. — Psalm cii. 24. 

XIII 

THE LOVE OF PRAISE 142 

They loved the praise of men more than the praise of 
God. — St. John xii. 43. 

XIV 

THE SHAME OF DETECTION 153 

As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the 
house of Israel ashamed. — Jebemiah ii. 26. 

XV 

A NARROWING LIFE 163 

For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch 
himself on it: and the covering narrower than 
that he can wrap himself in it. — Isaiah xxviii. 
20. 

XVI 

A FALSE STANDARD 174 

But they like men have transgressed the covenant: 
there have they dealt treacherously with me. — 
Hosea vi. 7. 



4 



CONTENTS 



XVII 

PAGE 

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 186 

Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach 
Christ's Gospel and a door was opened unto me 
of the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because 
I found not Titus my brother. — 2 Corinthians 
ii. 13. 

XVIII 

THE REPROOF OF LIFE 198 

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth 
among the wise. — Proverbs xv. 31. 

XIX 

TnE COURAGE AND THE COWARDICE OF SIN . 211 
His bipod be on us and on our children. — Matthew 
xxvii. 25. 

Ye intend to bring this man's blood upon us. — Acts 
v. 28. 



XX 

PERMISSION WITHOUT SANCTION .... 222 
And God said unto Balaam, Thou shalt not go with 
them. . . . And God came unto Balaam at night 
and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, 
rise up and go with them. . . . And God's anger 
was kindled because he went. — Numbers xxii. 
12, 20-22. 

XXI 

RIGHTFUL CONFORMITY 231 

Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to 
fulfil all righteousness. — St. Matthew iii. 15. 



CONTENTS 



5 



XXI 



PAGE 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 



243 



The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all 
therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that 
observe and do ; but do not ye after their works : 
for they say and do not. — St. Matthew xxiii. 3. 

XXIII 

THE CHURCH'S APPEAL TO MEN .... 256 
Come with us and we will do thee good. Leave us 
not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest 
how we are to encamp in the wilderness and 
thou mayest be to us instead of eyes. — Numbers 
x. 29-31. 



Let no man despise thy youth. — 1 Timothy iv. 12. 
XXV 

THE IMMORTALITY OF MEMORY . . . .276 
The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of 
the wicked shall rot. — Proverbs x. 7. 



XXIV 



THE GIFT OF YOUTH 



266 



XXVI 



PAST AND PRESENT 



287 



Say not thou, What is the cause that the former 
days were better than these? for thou dost not 
inquire wisely concerning this. — Ecclesiastes 
vii. 10. 



) 



XXVII 



THE PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT . . . .298 
I wiU bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of 
their thoughts. — Jeremiah vi. 19. 



INTRODUCTORY 

One of the sermons in this volume was preached at 
Mansfield College, Oxford, and two at Scottish uni- 
versities ; the rest were preached during the last two 
years at many of the American universities and col- 
leges. My own seminary sets me free for some 
months each year of express purpose to visit the 
universities, and I appreciate the great privilege so 
freely offered me of entering somewhat into the col- 
lege life of America. The open-mindedness which is 
so attractive a feature of American life is also char- 
acteristic of the universities, and whatever be the 
special religious colour of each, I have had the same 
cordial invitation and generous welcome from all. 
These sermons were delivered as university preacher 
at some of the older universities, such as Yale and 
Harvard and Princeton, and at some of the smaller 
colleges, like Williams and Amherst, and also at some 
of the newer universities, and even at some of the 
State universities, which, though they do not have 
the office of university preacher, make other provi- 
sion. Four of the sermons are in pairs, which were 

7 



8 



INTRODUCTORY 



given on successive Sundays, one pair at the Univer- 
sity of Chicago and the other at Cornell University. 

The sermons generally were not chosen for their 
academic character, but were expressly designed to 
avoid scholastic issues. It is my experience that the 
last thing an academic audience at public worship 
wants is an academic discourse, partly because stu- 
dents have a surfeit of that in their ordinary studies, 
and partly because a college congregation, after all, 
consists very largely of young men who are not much 
more than beginning their education, and whose 
problems are the practical problems of all youth. 
More than guidance in speculation, do they need 
simply inspiration for life. At many colleges where 
opportunity offered, in addition to the regular chapel 
service I met the men later in a less formal way, and 
we discussed the intellectual and speculative bearings 
of religion, often in the form of questions supplied 
by the students. 

Superficial observers sometimes speak of the ma- 
terialism of America. Nothing could be further 
from the truth, when we look deeply and broadly. 
It might even be said with far more truth that 
America suffers in every region of life from an un- 
regulated idealism. Certainly no one can know inti- 
mately the mass of students without being struck by 



INTRODUCTORY 



9 



the ready response they give to every high thought 
and every generous passion. ~No one can despair of 
the future who knows the splendid material the col- 
leges of the land contain, and how eagerly men long 
to attempt great tasks. If anything, the practical 
and ethical interests overmatch the intellectual. In 
religion the social side bulks largest, and this be- 
cause of the new ideals of social service, which is only 
another way of stating the demands of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. Men are anxious to know how best to 
invest their lives, and never before was there such 
keen desire to find a place to serve. It is the most 
hopeful thing in our situation that our educational 
institutions are supplying men with large and noble 
ideals of social duty. 



I 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

The keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all 
the prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they 
did there, he was the doer of it. — Genesis xxxix. 22. 

Joseph, as depicted in the beautiful Biblical nar- 
rative, was a born leader. His sweet and gracious 
nature with its brightness and alertness gave him 
easy access to men's hearts. He was naturally 
lovable. His personal comeliness for one thing pre- 
possessed everybody in his favour ; for he was " a 
goodly person and well-favoured." Then he was of 
a gentle and affectionate disposition, which delighted 
in giving people pleasure and in serving them. He 
had also early learned in the school of affliction, 
which only made his heart more tender and consid- 
erate of others. He was a man of principle, too, 
conscientious, trustworthy, willing to suffer rather 
than commit a base or dishonourable act ; and in the 
long run character counts for much and makes men 
instinctively trust the man of tried probity. His 
supreme qualification was that he had an inner life 

11 



12 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



of simple faith, which kept him from personal 
anxiety about his own future and left him free to 
think of others. 

There was in him in addition the unusual combi- 
nation of the imaginative and the practical. The 
young man who dreamed dreams and saw visions was 
also a man of affairs with remarkable talent for 
business, efficient in managing all he undertook. The 
gift of vision always attracts, compelling men by 
the force of a bold spirit, but the dreamer who can 
inspire to action is not always able to direct the 
force he sets in motion. He is often impractical 
and unbusinesslike. The born leader of men must 
have something of both qualities, the power of the 
dreamer of appealing to sentiment and creating en- 
thusiasm, bringing a glimpse of the ideal to his 
more prosaic followers; and at the same time he 
must prove his capacity and create confidence in his 
practical wisdom. Joseph showed he possessed both 
sets of qualities in all the varied situations in which 
he was placed. The young slave, who rose to be 
overseer in the house of his master, when he sank 
to be a prisoner impressed all there with his charac- 
ter and with his capacity, so that the keeper of the 
prison trusted him, and all the inmates readily as- 
sented to his personal superiority, till he took his 



THE GIFT OF 



INFLUENCE 



13 



natural place as leader, so that " whatsoever the 
prisoners did there, he was the doer of it." The 
prisoner became the real governor. He was the in- 
spiring force, bringing light and hope and accom- 
plishing more by his influence over others than was 
possible by any individual exertion. 

This is the way all leadership works. It is the 
power to do this which constitutes leadership. 'No 
man can do a great work single-handed. He must 
work with, and through, others. He must have 
friends and comrades of some sort, or at least in- 
struments; and the highest kind of leadership is 
that which makes all its instruments into friends, 
working together for a common end, comrades in 
a common cause. This peculiar magnetic power 
of a great leader makes his followers associate them- 
selves utterly with his fortunes, so that his triumphs 
become theirs, and his ambitions write themselves 
on their minds. They will serve and obey and 
gladly sacrifice that his ends may be advanced. It 
is said of Napoleon in his best days that before a 
battle on which much depended he summoned his 
officers into his tent one by one, grasped their hand 
and looked right into their eyes without a word ; and 
they went out all Napoleons, ready to die for him if 
need be. 



14 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



It is one of the noblest things in human nature 
that men give such pure devotion to an admired 
and loved leader, that they are hero-worshippers, 
though sometimes the hero is very poor clay at the 
best. In truth the world waits for leaders in every 
branch of thought and activity, waits for men whom 
it can follow with a whole heart, whether or not we 
believe with Carlyle that universal history, the his- 
tory of what man has accomplished in this world, is 
at bottom the history of the great men who have 
worked here. We may think more of the mass and 
less of the individual than Carlyle did; we may 
think that the followers have more to do with the 
making of their leaders than the leader has in shap- 
ing events ; but it remains true that every generation 
stands in dire need of men of light and leading, men 
who can thrill and inspire and direct and move 
their fellows to high thoughts and noble passions. 
■ Even for practical success in every great enter- 
prise there is a clamant need of leadership. The 
best designs and the best organizations will come to 
little without some inspiring head. Every great 
work needs a controlling brain and heart, a centre 
for affection and devotion. If this be a-missing it 
is like the skeleton without the vital spark to make 
it live. If this be a-missing, even though all else be 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 15 

there, the best results are impossible. In every 
sphere we are ready to welcome the commanding in- 
fluence, if only the pre-eminence be justified by 
qualities that warrant it. We even content our- 
selves with sham leaders when no better are forth- 
coming; and Carlyle is right when he insists that 
the sole problem is to find out the true heaven-born 
leaders, to select the real heroes if such are to be had 
at all. In religion, and politics, and social service, 
even in business, we need the inspiring influence 
of leaders. We are all natural hero-worshippers. 
There is plenty of raw material for all the world's 
highest needs, plenty of humble eager souls who 
could be fired with zeal and devotion. A cry of our 
hearts is to be taken and held and drilled and sent. 
Even in Pharaoh's prison men bent to the fascina- 
tion of a man like Joseph, who could direct them and 
lead them, so that, whatsoever the prisoners did, he 
was the doer of it. It is the dream of youth to be 
some day swept into the circle of which a true and 
great man is the centre, to do his bidding gladly, to 
move to any mission at his request, proud to serve in 
some great cause. 

Shine on us all in armour, thou Achilles, 

Make our hearts dance to thy resounding tread. 

The history of the world may not be what it has 



16 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



been called, merely the biography of great men ; but 
at any rate the history of the world would be dif- 
ferent if the influence of even a few of its great 
men had been left out. Sometimes a whole epoch 
has been dominated by one man, who has made his- 
tory because he was able to move men by the impulse 
of his mind and soul. We sometimes think we can 
explain a great man by our common phrase, that he 
was the creature of his time; and there is usually 
much truth in the use of the phrase. The leader 
gets as well as gives. He cannot be put in a sepa- 
rate category as a thing apart, as if he were a pecu- 
liar creation, unrelated to the past and independent 
of the present. No man could affect his age if he 
were not in the fullest sense the fruit of the age, 
entering into its thought, knowing its problems, feel- 
ing the pulse of its life. The great world-move- 
ments do not owe their origin to one man's thought, 
like Minerva sprung full-grown from the brain of 
Jove. They grow from the needs of the time, the 
slowly gathering vital forces that will find outlet. 
The Reformation, for example, was greater than the 
reformers, greater than Luther or Calvin or Knox. 
In its political aspect it was the breaking of bonds in 
Western Europe that had become intolerable. In 
its inner aspect it was the movement of the soul of 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 17 



man towards liberty of mind and conscience, towards 
a fuller knowledge, a truer faith, a purer worship. 
But the acknowledged truth of all this gives us no 
warrant for imagining that we have explained the 
great man by calling him the creature of his time. 
If he brought no free and individual force to the 
situation it would only be where it was. Granted 
that the Reformation would have been without Lu- 
ther, there would need to be some other sort of 
Luther somewhere else, or, if you prefer it, some 
score of pigmy Luthers to do his work. There could 
be no Eeformation without at least some kind of 
reformers. 

It is a foolish way to treat history as if it were 
in a vacuum, the whirl of impersonal forces without 
father or mother or any definite human connection. 
We have got so scientific to-day with our tendencies 
and streams of influence and movements of thought, 
though it is not easy to see how there can be spiritual 
tendencies without spiritual beings, and moral in- 
fluence without moral life, and movements of thought 
without thinkers. As if there were in the world 
man but not men, the generic man without the indi- 
vidual ! It is of a piece with so many arguments of 
political economists about human life in terms of 
x and y, and their talk of the masses, as if the masses 



18 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



were not composed of units, each with his own 
heart's bitterness and his heart's joy. We play with 
words when we talk of tendencies and movements, 
as if we were really accounting for anything by the 
use of words like these ; and our preference of such 
general terms to acknowledging the creative influence 
of individuals is part of the latent infidelity which 
dislikes to admit creation in any sphere, the launch- 
ing of a force straight from the hand and the heart 
of God. 

We say also in similar strain that the occasion 
makes the man; and the truth of that is evident. 
But all life, every day, is an occasion ; and many an 
occasion has arisen in history, great enough to be 
called a crisis, but the man was not forthcoming, to 
the great loss of the occasion ! Sometimes rather the 
man makes the occasion, comes with his new mes- 
sage of truth, his new vision of good, his fresh in- 
spiration of duty; and it is his coming which is the 
occasion. If a generation has any distinctive char- 
acter at all, it is and must be the fruit of personal 
character. To treat the world of man without 
reference to the power of personal influence is to 
make it inexplicable. Joseph was the key of what- 
soever the prisoners did; for he was the doer of it. 
The lines the Eeformation took cannot be under- 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 19 



stood unless you understand something of Luther. 
History is impossible without biography; and some 
history is an enigma to us because we cannot learn 
the source of the hidden unseen power at its heart, 
the inspiration that gave life to the deeds. 

After all, the subtle magnetic force of a great man 
is only a common fact of life and experience, seen 
on a larger scale than usual. It is only a striking 
illustration of the common fact of influence, where 
height answers height, and soul catches fire from 
soul. It is, or may be, the gift of all in some meas- 
ure; and is not merely the privilege of the few. 
Indeed the most potent influences in the world are 
not always the most obtrusive. In a region like this 
we cannot judge by the eye. The doer of it all in 
the Egyptian prison was a very obscure person at 
the time. The men and things that make the big- 
gest splash in the world are sometimes the least im- 
portant. It is not always the man you praise who 
does the real work. The scheme for which the cabi- 
net minister gets credit is often the doing of an 
unknown permanent official. There is usually 
somewhere a man behind the throne of more im- 
portance than the man on the throne. How often 
the real source of even a great man's strength is 
derived from some humble and winsome soul who 



20 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



shrinks from notice, and who could not believe that 
whatsoever is done he is the real doer of it. You 
never can tell how even a word of comfort and cour- 
age will nerve another for a task which otherwise 
would be left undone. Who can say what of the 
great deeds of the world and the noble lives of men 
have been inspired by one who was unregarded by 
dull eyes and unpraised by blatant voices % 

Take the common sphere of a mother's influence. 
How many men will admit that all the good in 
them they owed to the example or teaching or mem- 
ory of their mother, and whatsoever of good they 
have done, she was the doer of it? The young man 
who goes out like a knight of old to fight in the 
battle of life, with his armour girt on him by a 
mother's hand, may not have even the largest 
share in the glory of the conquest. There is no 
end to spiritual influence; and you cannot al- 
ways put the finger on the place where it begins. 
The way of the spirit is the way of the wind. Thou 
canst not tell whither it bloweth nor whence it 
cometh. 

There is none so bereft of power, so barren of op- 
portunity, that he may not serve in this great con- 
f ederacy*of good. There is none who may not share 
in the burden and the glory of the Kingdom of 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 21 



Heaven. It cometh not with observation ; and not a 
thought or an effort or a prayer is lost, not a kindly 
deed or a gentle word is spent for nought. The 
patience of the sufferer, the faith of the lowly, the 
prayers of the saints, the love of loving hearts, the 
ministry of kindly hands, are as incense swung from 
the censers of the angels. You do not know when 
you touch the spiritual forces that surround life. 
In seeming inaction even, you may be the doer of 
whatsoever is done. 

This sacred gift of influence which is yours — 
what are you doing with it ? Are you wasting it on 
selfish ends, or hiding it in a napkin? If you have 
no consecration in your life, you are losing your best 
gift, you are losing your soul — and the souls of 
others. In the great Temple of human lives, what 
matter who puts on the cope-stone, and the gleam- 
ing pinnacle? What matter who does the work, 
and gets the credit, so that the work is done? If 
you consecrate yourself to God, you will get your 
place, and wield your influence. What higher work 
is there than to help another to a clearer vision of 
truth, or to a nobler sense of duty, to encourage in 
good and inspire to high ends ? 



II 



THE FAILURE OF GOD 

Eowbeit I sent unto you all My servants the prophets, ris- 
ing early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable 
thing that I hate. But they hearkened not nor inclined their 
ear to turn from their wickedness. — Jebemiah xliv. 4. 

These is a timid anaemic religion which is afraid 
to speak of God except in vague general terms, such 
as the Absolute, the First Cause, the Power that 
makes for righteousness, and the like. It is afraid 
to ascribe to God the emotional and moral qualities 
familiar to us in human nature, love, fear, jealousy, 
passion, eager desire. This is partly due to a worthy 
feeling, which dreads to degrade the divine by too 
close association with human attributes. Figures of 
speech, which speak of God performing acts like a 
man, sound offensive to superfine ears. This type 
of religion would worship God as the Infinite, or 
the Eternal, or as Absolute Law; and takes care to 
avoid the anthropomorphism which frankly attrib- 
utes human qualities to God, by invariably using 

ethereal and colourless ideas. It is shocked by such 

22 • 



THE FAILURE OF GOD 



23 



an idea as ascribing jealousy to God, or by such a 
figure as here, which pictures God rising early in 
the morning that He might lose no time in sending 
prophets and messengers to the people He loved 
in the eager desire for their good. It will have 
nothing but abstruse philosophical words to express 
spiritual things, and as a religious result it ends in 
expressing nothing; for it whittles away any real 
notion of God at all, and soon is submerged in a 
vague Pantheism. 

Religiously it is a failure ; for mere philosophical 
terms, however accurate, can never touch the hearts 
of men and inspire either true love or true worship. 
There is no irreverence in the way Scriptural writers 
ascribe to God thoughts and feelings and actions 
derived from human life. If God is to be real to 
us at all, a living personal Being, we are compelled 
to speak of Him in terms of the human. All 
language that we can use to express the divine 
attributes must necessarily be imperfect. We can 
have no conception of what we have no experience. 
We are forced by the limitations of our nature to 
think of God in human terms. Revelation also must 
do the same, or it would pass over our heads without 
effect. The Bible declares God to be infinite above 
thought or speech or imagination of man, with ways 



M THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



and thoughts higher than man's as the Heaven is 
higher than the earth. But it takes the highest that 
we know in man, love, generosity, mercy, justice, 
righteousness, and extends them, and declares that 
God is that and more, infinitely all that, the highest 
and best in man. We have said that this is a neces- 
sity both philosophically and religiously; and there- 
fore it is absurd to boggle at figures of speech which 
are designed to make vivid and real some aspect of 
these divine qualities. 

From a literary point of view also such superfine 
criticism is stupid. It is pedantry of the worst sort 
to condemn the prophets for depicting God as jeal- 
ously anxious for His people, or as pleading pas- 
sionately with them, rising early and sending mes- 
sengers beseeching them for their good, and yet 
failing in achieving His heart-felt desire. If God 
is love and is the living God, then these figures of 
speech are truer than any metaphysical subtleties 
to express the divine nature could possibly be. It 
was true insight, therefore, as well as moral bold- 
ness, that made the writers of the Bible fearlessly 
speak of God in the language of human nature, even 
the language of human passion. Again and again, 
for example, Jeremiah uses this same homely figure 
of speech as of a man rising early in his eagerness, 



THE FAILURE OF GOD 25 



despatching messengers, leaving no means untried 
to bring His people to a right mind, pleading with 
them, and yet failing in His benign purpose as a 
man fails. It is a figure of the everlasting patience 
of God, refusing to be tired out, bearing and for- 
bearing, trying new plans and new agents, and 
yet beaten back by invincible obstinacy, His best 
schemes frustrated, His kindest designs defeated, 
having at the last to acknowledge Himself baffled. 
" I sent unto you all My servants the prophets, rising 
early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this 
abominable thing that I hate. But they hearkened 
not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wick- 
edness." 

It is a vivid picture of the failure of God. From 
the philosophical point of view where God is the 
Absolute, eternal irrefragable Law, His purpose can 
never be said to fail; the immutable word cannot 
return void but must accomplish that which it will. 
And in a logical system of doctrine, of which there 
is none so logical and consistent as Calvinism, the 
Sovereignty of God must be maintained, with radi- 
ance undimmed and supremacy unchallenged. His 
decrees go out and inevitably achieve their purpose, 
unerring as natural law. But there is another sense, 
true to the highest attributes of the divine nature, 



26 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



in which God may be said to fail often, to attempt 
what ends only in disaster. The Bible is a record 
of the failures of God, the putting forth of divine 
grace with no result, the travail of heart and soul 
with no fruit. Whenever we speak of His designs in 
terms of love, when we think of Him as the gracious 
Lord or Heavenly Father, dealing with disobe- 
dient vassals or with wilful children, we are brought 
face to face with this strange mystery, that the Lord 
of lords and King of kings can fail of His purpose 
and be unable to attain what He most desires. The 
Bible constantly depicts God as putting forth to the 
utmost His redemptive grace, seeking ever to find 
an opening to the heart of man, trying every shift 
that wisdom and love can suggest, putting Himself 
on the level of men, pleading with them, " Oh, do 
not this abominable thing that I hate," rising early 
and sending His servants, asking for obedience and 
reasonable service; and yet every effort repulsed, 
His grace made of none effect, beaten back by the 
obstinate defence of man. It is failure so complete 
that the terrible words could be said, " It repented 
the Lord that He had made man." 

This is the heart-breaking pathos of the wonder- 
ful literature of the Bible, the failure of all the 
gracious means designed by perfect love, not merely 



THE FAILURE OF GOD 27 

that so much of the world lay in darkness though 
the light shone, not merely that so little impact was 
made, and even is still made, on the great mass of 
men outside ; but even with God's own people, His 
covenanted folk, chosen of express purpose to know 
His will and to carry out His design, even there 
what failure? The whole history of revelation 
reads like an extension of this pitiful figure of our 
text, detailing the steps taken, the different efforts 
made, of which this is but the summing up, " I sent 
unto you all My servants the prophets, rising early 
and sending them saying, Oh, do not this abominable 
thing that I hate. But they hearkened not nor in- 
clined their ear to turn from their wickedness." 
Is not that the plain and simple impression left on 
us by the whole story of God's dealing with Israel, 
the tragedy of unrequited love, the failure of re- 
peated attempts to establish permanent relations of 
devotion and service ? 

It is our Lord's own interpretation of that history 
of revelation with Israel given so graphically in 
the parable of the Vineyard, planted with care, 
hedged round with love, enriched with winepress, 
protected with tower, and let out to husbandmen. 
What more could be done to the vineyard than had 
been done? It was to be expected that when the 



28 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



time of fruit drew near and He sent His servants 
to the husbandmen, that He would receive of the 
fruit. This is our Lord's solemn pronouncement on 
the history of Israel — " The husbandmen took his 
servants and beat one and killed another and stoned 
another. Again he sent other servants more than 
the first ; and they did unto them likewise. But last 
of all he sent unto them his son, saying, they will 
reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw 
the son they said among themselves, This is the 
heir; come let us kill him and let us seize on the 
inheritance. And they caught him and cast him out 
of the vineyard and slew him." It is the same figure 
of the Lord rising early and sending His servants, 
making continual allowance, patiently persisting in 
His effort, hoping against hope. It is the same fig- 
ure also of ultimate failure, a failure more disas- 
trous, more irretrievable, because the very last re- 
source has been tried and again has failed. " Last of 
all He sent His own son." What more now could 
love suggest that love has not done ? 

To see how essentially true is Jeremiah's moving 
picture of God's eagerness and God's failure, we 
need only think of that scene in the last week of the 
Saviour's passion when He mourned over the holy 
city with yearning pitiful love, " O Jerusalem, 



THE FAILURE OF GOD 



29 



Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest 
them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth 
her brood under her wings — and ye would not." 
They would not listen; they would not respond; 
they would not obey; they would not be saved. Is 
there any failure in all the world like the failure 
of God? 

Now this great solemn fact of the failure of God 
on which we have been insisting is really no failure 
on His part, because the possibility of it is involved 
in the very nature of the case. It is essential to 
moral life, which means the life of beings capable 
of falling, capable of rebellion, open to sin. Moral 
law cannot from the very constitution of moral law 
be classed with natural law, which has unerring sway 
and cannot be broken. But in the realm of morals 
such inevitable compulsion is impossible. Moral 
and spiritual freedom is a necessity of the case. 
Only by self-determination of the will, only by free 
choice of man, can God gain the victory. If men 
will not hearken and will not incline their ear to 
turn from their wickedness, if they will not submit 
their heart to the obedience of Christ, then though 
God send His servants rising early and sending them 
with everlasting patience and resourceful love, 



30 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



pleading, beseeching, the great purpose of religion 
cannot be accomplished. God cannot succeed, if 
man fails. So that, if we consider rightly, it is 
not the failure of God after all which we have been 
lamenting, but the failure of man. And the ulti- 
mate issue of it is not merely evil against God, but 
as the prophet puts it great evil against your own 
souls. The failure is yours — and the penalty. The 
divine grace can accomplish anything, can overcome 
every obstacle, till it comes down to the bed-rock of 
human will ; and then, if it fails, it is the failure not 
of God but of man. Human will is an ultimate in 
religion and in life. It cannot be evaded; and be- 
fore the great benign purpose of religion can be 
accomplished the citadel of the will must be cap- 
tured, and that can only be by willing submission 
by which the will is conformed to the will of God. 

So the failure of God is the failure of man. Also, 
if this pathetic figure of Jeremiah which depicts 
God as so eager to win man that He is as an Over- 
lord who rises early and continues late devising ex- 
pedients, sending servants with never a break in the 
benevolent chain, giving them pleading messages to 
deliver — if this figure represents the facts, what 
wilful inexcusable failure is ours? Does not the 
figure fairly represent the fact? We have seen it 



THE FAILURE OF GOD 



31 



to be so in the long record of Biblical history; and 
if we appeal to our own hearts to sustain that sad 
verdict, do not our hearts condemn us % If we have 
failed to understand and to fulfil the law of God 
which is the law also of our own life, if we have 
failed to enter into the filial relationship with God, 
if we are living only as the beasts that perish with 
dull ears that never respond to the higher call and 
fat hearts that never move to the divine impulse, 
it is not for want of opportunity (be magnanimous 
enough to bear God witness), it is not for lack of 
messengers — He has sent them all, rising early and 
sending them, one by one, pleading with burning 
words, Oh do not this abominable thing that I hate, 
Turn ye ; why will ye die : Hear and your soul shall 
live. The world has been vocal with the call of God 
if we would but hear, and ablaze with signs of God, 
if we would but see. By silence and by sound, by 
mystery and by revelation, by providence and by 
grace, by holy days and holy places and holy men, 
love has clambered at our hearts, knocked at the 
door till deathless love itself has almost died of 
hopelessness — at sundry times and diverse manners, 
if by any chance one might succeed where others 
fail, He has spoken by the prophets, rising early and 
sending them. 



32 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



Last of all, He sent His own Son, standing beside 
us, touching us with human hands, calling us with 
human voice. By the blood and the tears and the 
passion and the cross — and " ye will not come unto 
me that ye might have life." If the failure of God 
is mystery, the failure of man is tragedy. 



Ill 

RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH 

Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over- 
wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not overmuch 
wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before 
thy time? — Ecclesiastes vii. 16. 

Our text is characteristic of one of the lines of 
thought which run through this strange Book. The 
Book is autobiographical in the true sense, that it 
gives a record of personal thought and experience. 
The Book is the fruit of the contact of a Jew with 
alien philosophy and civilisation. There is ever the 
echo of the great world outside Jewry. The author 
had seen the world, and had tried the different ways 
of life which have ever been possible for men. 
Brought up in the strict training of his race, he 
had escaped from what appeared its narrowness; he 
had seen the cities and the ways of men, and had 
become cosmopolitan. He had wealth, which opened 
all doors to him of education and culture and social 
enjoyment. 

The Book is full of world-weariness. The satiety 
33 



34 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



which comes from such a life seems at first to have 
destroyed all serious earnest purpose; and he pro- 
nounced upon all things the verdict of vanity, that 
everything was equally worthless, and nothing 
counted much anyway. It is the judgment of a man 
who had seen everything, done everything, enjoyed 
everything, tried all the pleasures and experiences 
within his reach, and over all he sighs failure, vanity, 
and vexation of spirit. The early zest for life was 
soon blunted. Pleasures no longer pleased. The 
heart was satiated to sickness. He had set out to 
know life, as many young men mean by knowing life, 
and life had broken him and held him in its toils. 

He had not given himself altogether to lower 
pleasures. He had tried literature, knowledge, phi- 
losophy, the higher and more intellectual delights. 
He had tried to find out a satisfactory philosophy of 
life, but here too is the same vanity. Truth seems 
ever to elude him. And ever and again he comes 
back with longing to the faith of his childhood, with 
its inexorable moral law, with the fear of God as the 
one only worthy aim of life. The Book is not a 
systematic treatise. It is the record of all these 
conflicting experiences and influences. All these dif- 
ferent threads mingle in the yarn, and we cannot 
separate them completely. But the withered world- 



RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH 



35 



weary life, so frankly revealed in this Autobiogra- 
phy, is itself the most terrible sermon that could be 
preached from the Book, of the vanity of a life lived 
apart from God. 

The words of our text, with their doctrine of 
moderation, suggest a common thought in Greek 
philosophy. A warning against excess was usual 
even in the Epicurean philosophy, as excess would 
inevitably ruin the end aimed at, happiness. Mod- 
eration in everything, the golden mean, was a watch- 
word. Avoid extremes, do nothing in excess, be pru- 
dent in pleasures, in nothing be violent and intem- 
perate — this is the surest way to be happy. But 
quite apart from the question of happiness and 
pleasure, in typical Greek thinking the good, or vir- 
tue, or moral excellence lay in avoiding extremes. 
It might be called the very central thought of Aris- 
totle's Ethics that virtue is moderation, not of course 
meaning moderation in indulging in anything 
wrong, but that wrong itself means either excess or 
deficiency. He defines virtue as a habit or trained 
faculty of choice, the characteristic of which lies in 
observing the mean. " And it is a moderation, 
firstly, inasmuch as it comes in the middle or mean 
between two vices, one on the side of excess, the 
other on the side of defect; and secondly, inasmuch 



36 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

as, while these vices fall short of, or exceed, the due 
measure in feeling and in action, it finds and 
chooses the mean or moderate amount." How true 
this is as a principle of ethics can easily be seen. 
Take the matter of giving money, virtue or modera- 
tion would be liberality ; the two corresponding vices 
would be excess, which is prodigality, and deficiency, 
which is meanness. Even in details of life like 
pleasant amusing conversation, Aristotle would call 
moderation wit or humour, and undue excess buf- 
foonery, and undue deficiency boorishness, as of a 
man who frowned gloomily on every innocent jest. 
This great principle of the mean is in keeping with 
the whole Greek ideal of culture, as the harmonious 
development of every part, without onesidedness. 

We can see how attractive it must have appeared 
to a man like the author of this Book, and how 
easily the principle would give itself to a moral 
descent in a Jew, whose religious faith was break- 
ing down. He describes one of his moods in what 
he calls the days of his vanity. He had seen good 
men failing, and wicked men succeeding, and liv- 
ing out their years, just because they were prudent 
in their wickedness. And so from that he draws 
the cynical conclusion of our text. " Be not right- 
eous overmuch, neither be thou overwise. Be not 



RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH 37 



overmuch wicked, neither be thou too foolish." 
The great thing is prudence. Do not overdo any- 
thing. Do not stick too much to principle ; you will 
only make yourself a bore to other men, and give 
yourself needless unhappiness. Do not aim too high 
in anything. If you try to be too good, people will 
give you the cold shoulder as a fanatic. If you try 
to be too wise, you will only bring sorrows on your- 
self, and besides after all it is not very much you can 
know. Yet, on the other hand, you must not go into 
excess in the other extreme. Be not overmuch 
wicked. Don't be a fool. Why shouldest thou die 
before thy time? And excess means decay of 
powers, and premature death. Stick to the safe and 
middle course. It does not pay to be violent on 
either side. To be desperately religious, or to be 
desperately irreligious, makes people look askance on 
you. You will be like a speckled bird in the nest 
for all the others to peck at. Do not obtrude your 
principles too much, if you have any. Moderation 
is the mark of respectability. Take religion 
easily. Wink a little at others' faults and they will 
wink at yours. " Be not righteous overmuch." It 
is not a very high-toned morality this, when we ex- 
tend it thus, and see what it comes to, but it is the 
ordinary morality of the world, the practical good 



38 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



sense of moderation which the world approves, the 
prudent self-control which passes for wisdom among 
men. 

There is much to be said for this doctrine of 
moderation even in what is called righteousness, at 
a time like that in which the writer lived, when 
righteousness was looked on by most as external cere- 
monies and keeping of endless rules, rather than as 
spiritual passion. There is often much justification 
for the sneer at overmuch righteousness at all times, 
when the soul has died out of religion and the punc- 
tilious keeper of the law becomes self-complacent 
and censorious of others. It is this gives point and 
sting, and even justice, to Robert Burns' " Address 
to the Unco Guid," or the Bigidly Eighteous, 

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel, 
Sae pious and sae holy, 
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell 
Your neibours' fauts and folly! 

Censoriousness, such as Burns describes, is the 
temptation of the over-righteous. If righteousness 
means a rigid adherence to points and details, and if 
it leads to what St. Paul calls the vainly pufTed up 
mind, then the counsel is good, " Be not righteous 
overmuch." 

It is, however, only in a very limited degree, and 



RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH 39 



only when the true meaning of righteousness is ob- 
scured, that there is any truth in the cynical counsel. 
If righteousness is inward conformity to the holy 
will of God, then there can be no limitations set to 
the standard of righteousness. From this point of 
view the prudential policy of our text is really a 
terrible moral degradation. What a decline and fall 
it was for the author of this Book to have been ever 
able to so mistake religion ! For a Jew to think this, 
even in a passing mood, was to belie his race, and to 
betray the faith of his fathers. The Jews had a 
zeal for God — Paul bears them witness, and the 
world must bear them witness. It is their glory 
that they gave the world religion, because of the 
passion in their very blood for righteousness. 

How different this attitude of our text is from 
that of the prophets and psalmists and saints of the 
Old Testament ! To the prophet Amos this was the 
most terrible of all punishments of national sin that 
there would be a famine in the land, not a famine 
of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the 
word of the Lord. Not the search after happiness, 
but the search after holiness is the keynote of the 
Bible. We can feel the throb, and hear the cry, 
even in the cold printed page. " As the hart 
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul 



40 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, 
for the living God." Another exiled saint, thinking 
of the privileges of worshipping in the House of 
God, cries, " My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for 
the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh cry 
out for the living God." In presence of this how 
mean and pitiful appears the worldly policy of pru- 
dence, to be moderately good, and not too outrage- 
ously bad, because such extremes do not pay ! 

The doctrine of the golden mean in religion, as 
our author states it, only needs to be put alongside 
of such words of psalmists and saints, to stand in con- 
demnation. It is true that moderation is a good 
quality, but it is not, as Aristotle made it, the essen- 
tial condition of virtue. Morality needs a higher 
standard than anything that can be associated with 
prudence. To dethrone duty from the first place in 
order to give its room to policy ; to make expediency 
the rule of conduct instead of principle, is to debase 
man and deny God. Our Lord pronounces His in- 
effable blessing upon the very men whom this 
worldly wisdom sneers at. " Blessed are they that 
hunger and thirst after righteousness." They may 
not have the success and popularity which the pru- 
dent trimmer achieves. They have not the pleasant 
satisfaction and easy contentment which come to the 



RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH 41 



dulled soul. Nay, they are torn by a passionate de- 
sire, and burn with the fervour of longing. They 
have the pain of heart-hunger and thirst of soul, 
keener in its sense of • need than any craving of ap- 
petite. They are weighted by the consciousness of 
sin, and are driven by a sense of spiritual want. 
They are tormented by a passion for purity, and 
they pine after holiness — and nothing but God can 
fill the aching void of heart. 

Victims of unsatisfied desire, smitten by the mal- 
ady of the ideal, 

Striving to attain 
By shadowing out the unattainable, 

how are they blessed? Surely there is much to 
be said for the policy which avoids burdening the 
life with spiritual discontent, " Be not righteous 
overmuch." Is that not the way to attain to 
comfort and respect and a pleasant life, and the 
affection of our fellows? Yes, that is the way. If 
you want that harvest, that is the kind of sowing 
you must do. 

But how can there be blessing along with pining, 
with want, with hunger and thirst, with unappeased 
desire? Wherein are they blessed? In this way, 
that desire is ever a note of life. When life begins, 
need begins. Life is a bundle of want. And the 



42 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



higher the desire, the higher the life. The body can 
hunger and thirst, and has its own bodily cravings. 
The mind hungers and thirsts for knowledge, and 
when desire stops mental development stops. All 
development is along the line of desire. The mark 
of spiritual life is spiritual desire, a moral longing 
for conformity to the will of God. 

There is a school of philosophy, pretentious in its 
claims, which disposes of the whole question of re- 
ligion by extending even further the cynical counsel 
of Ecclesiastes, " Be not righteous overmuch." It 
says in some form or other, Eeduce your wants : Give 
up all this searching after God, all this attempt to 
conform to an impossible ideal: Why strive after 
the unattainable? Why torment yourself with vi- 
sions of perfection ? Why not rest content in a lower 
plane % The unknown is the unknowable. " Be 
not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself over- 
wise." It is a craven creed at the best. Even if 
there were no satisfaction, even if the world-weary 
advice of Ecclesiastes were the better policy, even if 
the malady of the ideal were incurable, it would still 
be duty to hunger after it, it would still be the best 
and highest for the living soul, it would still be the 
master-light of all our seeing. But says Christ, who 
walked with unclouded vision and certain tread 



RIGHTEOUS OVERMUCH 



43 



among spiritual things, " They shall be filled.'' 
The unattained is not the unattainable. 

" Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, for they shall be filled." Filled with 
righteousness, that is. Instinct does not play man 
false here any more than in any other sphere of 
need. Bodily hunger means that there is food that 
can satisfy it. If there is a God-given instinct of the 
soul, that want also can be supplied. If there is 
spiritual hunger, there is bread of life to appease it. 
If there is soul-thirst, there is water of life to 
quench it. They shall be filled with righteousness; 
they shall get their desire, obtain that to which they 
have given their hearts. If a man's earnest desire is 
God, God will be all in all to him one day. " Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and 
he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea, 
come, buy wine and milk without money and with- 
out price " — without price, except the price that ye 
should really hunger and really thirst. 

You cannot follow Jesus on the heights, if yours 
is the creed of the blase sensualist, " Be not righteous 
overmuch." You may go far, but you cannot go 
there. You cannot know the blessedness of His 
Kingdom, unless you hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness, with a spiritual craving that will not be 



44 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



satisfied until you awake in His likeness. To all 
who watch and pray, with a desire more than they 
that watch for the morning, this is His blessed prom- 
ise, " In the last day, that great day of the feast, 
Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, 
let him come unto Me, and drink." 



IV 



WISE OVERMUCH 

Neither make thyself overwise: why shouldest thou destroy 
thyself? — Ecclesiastes vii. 16. 

In last sermon we saw how the author of Ecclesi- 
astes applied the doctrine of the mean, of modera- 
tion as the secret of life, to religion, and reached the 
conclusion that it was best for a man to steer a middle 
course, and not be either over-righteous or over- 
wicked. We saw what truth there was in the advice 
as satire on formal religion ; and we saw its inherent 
falseness when contrasted with our Lord's pro- 
nouncement, " Blessed are they that hunger and 
thirst after righteousness." 

Here the same doctrine of moderation is extended 
to the intellectual sphere that the safest course is to 
avoid extremes here also and to do nothing in ex- 
cess. As the prudent man will not pain himself by 
vain efforts after perfect moral excellence but will 
be content to be moderately righteous and will not 
seek to pitch his principles to too high a tone ; so also 

45 



46 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



in matters of intellect the prudent man will not 
shorten his days with too eager speculation and too 
deep thought. He knows that wisdom is good, and 
that it is a terrible thing to be a fool, but it is almost 
as bad to be too wise. The worldly-wise man is not 
concerned with insoluble problems, and life is full 
of such problems. He is more concerned about 
practical things, and he sees that what pays best is 
practical good sense, and knowledge of life, and 
skill in affairs. He carefully avoids touching the 
mysteries, and infinities, and immensities, that sur- 
round human life. He feels that such knowledge is 
too high for him ; and besides, that is not the gate to 
success in the world. As in the question of holiness 
he shrinks from being infected by the malady of the 
ideal, so in the question of wisdom, he knows his 
limitations and will not aim at the stars. " Be not 
righteous overmuch, neither make thyself over- 
wise ; why shouldest thou destroy thyself \ 99 

The truth of this advice from his own point of 
view is seen more clearly if we translate the word 
" destroy 99 a little more fully. The primary idea 
of the word is that of silence, being put to silence, 
and thus it came to mean to be laid waste, or de- 
stroyed. But the root meaning is to be made deso- 
late, solitary, and was sometimes used of a lonely 



WISE OVERMUCH 



47 



solitary way. So that the question of the writer 
might be put, Why make thyself solitary? Why 
isolate thyself? If you are too good, people will 
turn from you, and call you a fanatic. If you are 
too wise, people will call you a bore. In any case 
you only make yourself unhappy. The exceptional 
always isolates. This is true on both sides, both of 
too high and too low, and explains why our author 
should in the same breath counsel his readers against 
being wicked overmuch and against being too much 
of a fool. Exceptional goodness or wickedness re- 
pels. Not many can breathe the rarefied air of the 
pit. Not many can have sympathy with the trans- 
cendental thinker, and nobody can have patience 
with a perfect fool with no ideas at all. The success- 
ful man is the man versed in the details of life, who 
knows his way about, who is not too much burdened 
either with overfine principles or with thin-spun 
notions; and yet who is both honest and capable. 
That is the sort of man everybody trusts, the shrewd, 
prudent, unimaginative, unimpulsive man of affairs, 
of good principles and clear brain, and yet not an 
enthusiast either for holiness or for new ideas. 
Ecclesiastes warns people off from the dangerous 
ground of the ideal. Why put others out of sympa- 
thy with you? he asks. The ordinary man of the 



48 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



street cannot see your far-away visions of truth or 
beauty or holiness. If you speak to him of them he 
will not understand, and will only shrug his shoul- 
ders and pass on. The thinker is lonely. 

Besides, too much thought unfits you for the ordi- 
nary happiness and comfort of life. Confine your- 
self to the practicable. Man with his limitations 
can only get a certain length in all his investigations, 
when he is brought up against an impassable wall. 
He is bafEed in every effort to know more. Like a 
bird in a cage, he only breaks his own wings with 
fluttering against the bars. All speculations end in 
mystery. All knowledge carried far enough up 
lands in deep darkness. Truth is elusive and only 
mocks the eager searcher. You scorn delights and 
live laborious days to find in the end — nothing. 

He who speaks thus knows; for he has tried. In 
his youth he too had dreamed of climbing the heights 
of truth. " I gave my heart to know wisdom. I 
perceived that this also is vexation of spirit [rather 
" pursuit of wind "J. For in much wisdom is much 
grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth 
sorrow." 

How pitifully true this is can be seen in the whole 
history of human thought. Every line on the page 
is traced in blood. Here too it seems the law of life 



WISE OVERMUCH 49 



that in the sweat of brow shall man eat his bread. 
In loneliness, in sickness of heart, in despair of the 
unknown, has every inch of ground been gained for 
the mind of man. The martyrs of truth are more 
than are to be found in any Church's hagiology. 
Only the shallow mind can be satisfied with what 
it knows, and can imagine that it amounts to very 
much. Only the trifler with truth can shut his eyes 
to the infinite mystery that enfolds every subject of 
knowledge. Why, then, not give up the fruitless 
quest, and the vain soaring into the empyrean, 
which ends only in " pursuit of wind " ? Stick to 
the regions which are more accessible. Some things 
are unknowable: do not fret your soul over them, 
but confine yourself to what can be ascertained and 
understood. Let your speculations and question- 
ings and problems alone. There is much force, and 
a strong appeal to our modern temper of mind, in 
the advice of our text, " Make not thyself over- 
wise." 

Further, there is justification for it even from a 
moral point of view. As the temptation of the over- 
righteous is censoriousness and self-satisfaction; 
so the temptation of the overwise is what St. Paul 
calls the vainly puffed-up mind, a besotted conceit 
and pride, as if wisdom will die with them, and 



50 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



which looks down with contempt on the vulgar un- 
lettered throng. Priggishness dogs the feet of the 
overwise. But as we saw that censoriousness came 
not from too much righteousness, but from too little, 
from a lack of the true spirit of righteousness; so 
contemptuous pride is the failing not of real but of 
spurious wisdom. When wisdom is supposed to be 
information, knowledge of facts, knowledge of books, 
it lends itself to the puffed-up mind. But these 
things, scientific facts, literature, are not wisdom; 
they are only the implements of wisdom, the mate- 
rial by which wisdom works. Wisdom is always 
humble ; for it knows how little it knows. 

Quite apart, however, from the possibility of this 
mistake which gives a kind of colour to his sneer, 
the advice of Ecclesiastes appeals to us to-day be- 
cause it fits in with our modern temper. Ours is a 
time when the supremacy of the practical over the 
speculative is complete. We see this even in the rela- 
tive position which science has taken as compared to 
philosophy. To discuss the questions of philosophy 
is thought by many to be a foolish waste of time, a 
vain attempt to make oneself overwise. Even theol- 
ogy, the Queen of the sciences as she used to be 
called, has been dethroned. Why trouble yourselves 
with such airy speculations as philosophy and theol- 



WISE OVERMUCH 



51 



ogy occupy themselves with? Better assume that 
there is a region which the mind of man is incapable 
of entering, such things as God and the human soul, 
and the ultimate end and meaning of life — these 
things can never be adequately known, even if they 
exist. To seek to know them is to try to make your- 
self overwise. Stick to facts, to material science, 
and to the practical details of life, and the knowl- 
edge of the world. All else are but cloudy vapours 
which obscure the mental vision, bottled moonshine, 
of no use for human nature's daily food. It is the 
merest futility to be ever probing into deep myste- 
ries, and asking with Pilate, What is Truth ? 

We are over-ridden by the practical in everything. 
In politics we say that we do not want theories, and 
ideal reforms, and Utopian schemes; we want the 
practicable, the thing that is expedient at the mo- 
ment. USTot principle but policy is the important 
thing. In religion we are told that theology, opin- 
ions, beliefs, convictions do not count, but only the 
plain duties of life, the practical virtues, kindness, 
tolerance, and such like. Even in science the specula- 
tive is ruled out, or must take a back seat. To invent 
a new kind of steam boiler, or a new explosive for 
shells, to do something that can be classed in the 
market, or made the basis of a joint-stock company, 



52 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



that kind of science takes precedence over the deep- 
est knowledge of the truths of nature. 

The value of this modern practical spirit must be 
admitted. It is true that in all these regions, in poli- 
tics, and religion, and science, the test of the tree 
must always be its fruit. But we are inclined to take 
too narrow a view of what the fruits are, and we can 
easily overreach ourselves by our exclusive standard 
of what is practical. These practical things on which 
we lay so much stress do not arrive ready-made, but 
are the results from a hidden source. In politics, 
will the fruit, expediency, not wither, when the root, 
principle, is cut away from it? In religion, will 
the plain moral duties remain when faith is dead? 
In science, even the practical man can only apply 
the discoveries and ascertained truths acquired by 
the natural philosophers. In all branches of life, 
though it may not pay to be overwise, and though 
the secret of success may be to confine yourself to 
the narrow limits of practical things, yet the 
progress of the world has been due, and must always 
be due, to these very same eager strenuous searchers 
after truth, to those who sought for knowledge as 
for hid treasure, to those finely tuned spirits who 
have followed truth though it led them into the 
wilderness. 



WISE OVERMUCH 



53 



A man may give himself to the practical in every 
sphere of activity simply from cowardice or even 
meaner motives still. It is possible to avoid some 
kinds of error by never seeking truth, possible to be 
free from some ways of going wrong by never trying 
to go right; but that position is to abrogate our 
rights as men, and it is to give up in despair all 
chance of truth, and besides it leads to certain er- 
ror. It can only mean ignoble error, rather than 
what is at the worst noble failure. It is easy to 
sneer at all who are consumed by a passion for pu- 
rity as over-righteous, and it is easy to sneer at all 
votaries of truth as making themselves overwise, 
but it remains true in religion that the one and com- 
plete aim of man is to be perfect even as God is 
perfect; and it remains true in things of intellect, 
that, as Bacon's noble words have it, " the inquiry 
of truth, which is the lovemaking or wooing 
of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the pres- 
ence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the 
enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human 
nature." 

It is in the region of divine truth that the cynical 
counsel of our text is most commonly given. To seek 
to know God, to find out His will, to understand 
anything about His purpose with us and the world, 



54 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



is we are told the futile attempt to make ourselves 
overwise. These things are beyond the bounds of 
the knowable for us. It is the part of the prudent 
man to give up all such fruitless strivings. He 
chooses the lower plane, where there can be some 
certainty, among the things we can see and touch, 
and which are open to the senses. If there be a God, 
man with his finite capacities cannot know Him. 
He is not only the Unknown, but also the Unknow- 
able. 

Even if it were true, as it is false, the counsel 
would not be the wisdom it claims to be. Even if 
there were no certain goal for the spirit of man, it 
would not follow that we should weakly give up the 
search. The same argument could be applied to all 
spheres of human knowledge. JSTot the simplest 
thing in the so-called matters of fact can be ade- 
quately explained. It is not only in religion that 
there is mystery, but everywhere. By the same 
argument all knowledge is impossible; for nothing 
can be completely known. Matter is as great a mys- 
tery as mind: mind is as great a mystery as soul. 
And even if the pursuit of this higher wisdom were 
doomed to failure, it does not follow that man should 
fall back on the lower level supinely. It can be no 
more his duty to let his spiritual faculty become 



WISE OVERMUCH 



55 



atrophied than any other power he possesses. There 
are some failures that are greater than some suc- 
cesses. " That soul makes noble shipwreck who is 
lost in seeking worlds." 

God is not the phantasm that this cynical creed 
assumes. He has been known of men. Man was 
made for God. His heart-hunger declares it. And 
says Christ, who spoke with the assurance of One 
who stood in the full noon of truth, " Ye shall know 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." " I 
am the Truth," He says. He is the truth about 
God. If we would know God, we must know Him. 
There is in these words opened up to us a different 
conception both of man and of God than we have 
in the agnostic counsel of despair. It is not making 
ourselves overwise thus to seek to know God: it 
is indeed fulfilling the law of our own nature. It 
is an infinite task that is presented to us, but not 
therefore an impossible task. Because we have not 
attained is the very reason why we must follow after, 
not why we must give up. " In Him are hid all 
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." To know 
Christ, to love Him, to follow Him, to serve Him, to 
become like Him — this is the task of life. Tour life 
has its value not from its attainments and posses- 
sions, but from its aim and spirit. Your life has 



56 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



value not from what you get but what you seek. 
Shut your ears to the low creed that would degrade 
you as man. Pray, believe, hope, love. " Ask and 
it shall be given unto you; seek and ye shall find; 
knock and it shall be opened unto you." 



V 



IS LIFE A BLESSING? 

It had "been good for that man if he had not been born. — 
St. Matthew xxvi. 24. 

Can it be said of a human life that it would have 
been better that it had never been? Men have 
sometimes said it of themselves. In some deep 
affliction, in some spasm of pain, in some great de- 
pression of soul, a man has cursed the day of his 
birth. Many a time life has appeared a very doubt- 
ful blessing, and sometimes a positive evil. Men 
have longed for death to get out of their troubles 
or sorrows or pain. Overworn, over-weary souls have 
sighed for the rest of the grave with a sentimental 
pleasure in the thought of the long sleep, where the 
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at 
rest. This is different from the other judgment 
which makes the gift of life itself a mistake. Bet- 
ter dead is not the same as better never to have been 
born. A man might well have a mood which wel- 
comes death, but who still is glad to have lived and 
counts life a blessed thing. A good man who had 

57 



58 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



made much of life and done much in it and fought 
the good fight manfully might yet be willing to lay 
down his arms. It is not necessarily to despise the 
gift of life to be ready to have done with it and to 
think that he has had enough of it here. We may 
even say that it is the natural fruit of the best life 
to be ready for the harvest, to be timely wise for the 
inevitable. Age should bring the mellow ripeness 
to which all earth's suns and summer can add noth- 
ing further. God shepherds many a soul into the 
eternal fold with great peace and even with glad 
hope. There is nothing unnatural and unexpected 
in age, for example, being ready and perhaps eager 
to go when the summons comes. 

It is time to be old, 

To take in sail: — 

The god of bounds 

Who sets to sea a shore, 

Came to me in his fatal rounds, 

And said, No more! 

St. Paul, who had filled up his glorious life with 
great thoughts and great deeds, was willing to re- 
main for his life-work's sake, that he might still 
serve, but was also willing to depart, which he said 
was to him far better. There are some weak and 
cowardly reasons which make some long for death 



IS LIFE A BLESSING? 



59 



and even seek it, but a similar mood may be induced 
by the noblest of all reasons. A high sense of hon- 
our even will make death seem preferable to dis- 
grace. " It were better for me to die," said Paul, 
" than that any man should make my glorying void " 
— better dead than that he should so lose his reputa- 
tion that he would be a hindrance instead of a help to 
the great cause he had at heart. It is no reflection 
upon the value of life to make such a judgment ; in- 
deed it may be because of the high worth placed 
upon life that death may also be valued. 

There is thus a clear distinction between the ver- 
dict that it would be better to die, and the other ver- 
dict that it would have been better never to be born. 
This latter suggests that life itself is a mistake, or 
at least, that the particular life has been no good gift. 
Even here we cannot indiscriminately label this as 
unworthy pessimism, the weak whimper of a craven 
soul. It is our Lord's deliberate judgment here 
about a man who was a disciple of His own 
and who therefore had made at least one high and 
noble decision. And if we think seriously and ob- 
serve dispassionately, there are probably occasions 
and circumstances about which we would all declare 
that should a man be there, " it had been good for 
that man if he had not been born." This, too, not 



60 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



always in the way of passing a moral judgment on a 
particular life. We can easily conceive of situations 
where it might be true of even whole populations. 
Have we not thought it reverently and sorrowfully 
of the little children who have suffered under 
the shameful atrocities of the unspeakable Turk? 
Might we not say it often of some of our 
own little children in our cities, born to little 
chance of anything true and pure and beautiful 
in life ? 

There is a bright cheerful optimism which speaks 
largely and gaily of the joy of life, and which shuts 
its eyes to the facts or looks at them through rose- 
coloured spectacles. That surface good opinion of 
the world as the best of all possible worlds fills one 
with nausea at its shallowness and comfortable make- 
belief. If you wink the eyes very hard on occasions, 
you can see what you want to see and hold on to your 
pleasant theories. Pessimism may be false, but that 
sort of facile optimism is false. It is not big enough 
to take in the facts of life and history. Pessimism, 
which holds that it would have been better for men 
not to have been born, at least accepts the hard 
and ugly and crooked facts, acknowledges evil and 
pain and unhappiness, all the shame and despair of 
life. It draws the dismal deduction from the facts 



IS LIFE A BLESSING? 



61 



that life is not a blessing, that the world's evil is 
incurable, and that the judgment of Christ here on 
Judas would be a true judgment on all men. What- 
ever we have to say about the deduction, it is much 
to have the facts acknowledged. 

Now it is a fact that good men not only have felt 
this despair of others and of mankind as a whole, 
but have also sometimes confessed it of themselves. 
Job in his pain cursed his day and said, " Let the 
day perish wherein I was born." He is represented 
as having had a happy and prosperous life, full of 
peace and plenty and usefulness and faith. Does it 
seem like pettish irritation that, when he suffered 
loss and pain and sorrow, he should bemoan his lot 
and despise the whole gift of life % That is to mis- 
read his situation. It was not just his own personal 
pain that made him cry out in despair. It was the 
deeper problem which his pain represented. It was 
all bound up in his faith in God ; and for him to lose 
that faith was to lose everything. The whole fabric 
of his faith was falling, and he seemed to be sitting 
in his misery and solitude among the ruins. Would 
it not be true still of all men of faith, that if they 
could not believe in God they could no longer believe 
in human life % Life in its large sense would be an 
intolerable burden, tantalised by its mystery and 



62 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



oppressed by its futility. They might well think 
it all a huge farce, and declare that it would be bet- 
ter for men never to have been born, if they are only 
born for this ultimate failure. 

Or it may come in another form as it did to the 
prophet Jeremiah, who said, " Cursed be the day 
wherein I was born. Cursed be the man who 
brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child 
is born unto thee ; making Mm very glad," he adds 
pathetically. He was a sensitive soul, feeling him- 
self called to a great work to proclaim God's will to 
his people whom he loved, and meeting with obloquy 
and contempt and his message received with scorn 
and refusal. He had to see the fated nation stagger 
to its doom in spite of himself, seemingly in spite 
of God also. The anguish of his soul forced from 
him the bitter cry, because here, too, it was not his 
own personal pain that was the problem. It was, 
as in Job's case, almost like the negation of God to 
the prophet ; for it looked as if God were powerless, 
or as if Jeremiah was cherishing a delusion in think- 
ing himself a prophet of God at all. But these we 
may say were only temporary moods in both Job and 
Jeremiah ; for they both kept their faith in God and 
came out into the light. That is true, and so there 
is nothing like real pessimism in either Job or 



IS LIFE A BLESSING? 63 



Jeremiah. There it was only a mood and not the 
central faith. Out-and-out pessimism could not he 
better defined than by the words of our text that it 
says bluntly and almost brutally, It had been good 
for man if he had not been born. 

It may begin with a personal sense of emptiness 
and disappointment, making a man believe that his 
own life is not worth living. Or it may come through 
looking out on the world, seeing its evil with sharp 
eyes and believing that the evil is incurable, till 
mere life is thought of not as a boon but a curse. 
As in Ecclesiastes, " I returned and considered all 
the oppressions that are done under the sun; and 
behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they 
had no comforter; and on the side of their oppress- 
ors there was power; but they had no comforter. 
Wherefore I praise the dead which are already dead 
more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, 
better than both is he which hath not yet been, who 
hath not seen the evil work which is done under the 
sun." This terrible depression of mind was due not 
to any sorrow of self, but to the contemplation of 
the sorrows of others. It is the same sentiment as 
the verse of the Chorus in Sophocles' Oedipus 
Coloneus, commenting on the grief and woes of the 
hapless Oedipus, 



64 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



The happiest fate of man Is not to be; 
And next in bliss is he who soon as born, 
From the vain world and all its sorrows free, 
Shall whence he came with speediest foot return. 

Does this solemn judgment of our Lord on Judas, 
using the same words almost, give colour to the ver- 
dict of pessimism? It at least disposes of the shal- 
low optimism of which we spoke. But what has it 
to say to the rival theory of the worthlessness of 
life ? It also pronounces on that man that it would 
have been good if he had not been born. Yet there 
is no support given to the idea that life as such is 
a curse and a mistake. Rather the words of Jesus 
imply the very opposite, that life is a blessed and 
glorious thing, a great gift which is also and there- 
fore a great responsibility. Here Judas is stated as 
a great exception, a burden of guilt and misery so 
heavy as to counteract the immense value Jesus put 
upon a single life. It is judgment not on life, but 
on an evil life, a pronouncement of doom on the 
waste and tragic failure of a life. The whole under- 
lying implication is that life itself is a great gift and 
a great blessing, but Judas had forfeited the gift and 
turned the blessing into a curse. 

Was it not a true judgment ? To have been born, 
to have tasted both the joy and the power of life, 



IS LIFE A BLESSING? 



65 



to have grown into manhood and had glimpses of the 
best possible in life, to have met the Christ and 
heard His call, to have felt the thrill of response 
as he turned and followed the highest, to have com- 
panioned with Jesus and spent days and nights in 
His fellowship, and then to have ended in this in- 
famy, to have nursed the traitor's heart against all 
the promptings of his best nature and to have done 
the traitor's deed — what else could be said of that 
tragedy but that it had been good for that man if he 
had never been born ? It is not to pronounce a judg- 
ment of pessimism on human life, but to pronounce 
a judgment of failure on that wasted life. It is not 
to declare that life itself is a curse, but that a man 
may make it a curse to himself and others. 

What distinguishes absolutely our Lord's judg- 
ment from pessimism is that with Him the standard 
is not personal happiness, but the moral value of 
the life. Those who say that life is not worth living 
usually mean that it has not enough happiness or 
too much unhappiness in it. If pleasure fails and 
peace departs, if days of darkness come and sorrow 
is the portion, then you may curse the day of birth 
and be sorry you ever lived. But our Lord had 
other standards of life than that, and judged the 
worth or the worthlessness of life by other measures. 



66 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



It might be better never to have lived indeed He 
held, but for other reasons than because evil days 
come when a man may say with truth, I have no 
pleasure in them. Life meant a great gift with op- 
portunities of being something and becoming some- 
thing, as well as enjoying something. It is the moral 
value of a life which judges it, not the personal hap- 
piness it contained. 

Is life a blessing ? It depends on what you mean 
by life. From this standpoint you may have had 
no success and little of the sunshine ; you may have 
nothing to show for all your years of effort ; you may 
have known pain and tasted sorrow, and yet life may 
be eminently worth living, and having finished the 
course you pass out rich with the spoils of life. 
While, you may have had your years filled with suc- 
cess and happiness, have hardly known ache or pain, 
tasted of every pleasure and joy, drank of the cup 
of life that ran over, have been quite sure that it 
was worth your while to live since it brought you so 
much satisfaction, and yet for the higher ends of 
life, for the true meaning of living, it may be said 
that it would have been good for you never to have 
been born. 

If we would escape from the doom of Judas we 
must take our life solemnly as a great gift, thank- 



IS LIFE A BLESSING? 



67 



fully rejoicing in all that is light and sweet and beau- 
tiful in it, but also seriously accepting the great 
moral responsibility of the gift. Even if the joy of 
life is gone, its duties remain, and its opportunities 
for service. This is certain, from Christ's stand- 
point, that if a man's life has been a curse to others, 
if he has lived to blight and corrupt, it had been good 
for that man if he had not been born. Remember the 
stern word of the gentle Christ : " Whoso shall cause 
one of these little ones which believe on Me to 
stumble, it were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in 
the depth of the sea." 



VI 



> HUMILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE 

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man 
that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than 
he ought to think; hut to think soberly, according as God 
hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. — Romans xii. 3. 

Jlfter the dogmatic statement of Christian truth, 
contained in the first part of this great Epistle, with 
its keen logic and wealth of historical illustration, 
St. Paul proceeds to give the practical conclusions 
which follow to the Christian community. He 
shows how the faith which he has built up in rea- 
soned steps carries an implication, on their part, who 
hold the faith, to live it out in conduct. St. Paul 
never elaborates the doctrinal side of religion for 
its own sake. The doctrinal exists for the sake of 
the ethical. The two are ever interwoven into the 
fabric of his thought. Christian conduct, Christian 
duty, Christian character, flow from Christian doc- 
trine, as a stream from its fountain. Having shown 
the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the 
knowledge of God in the scheme of Christian truth, 

68 



HUMILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE 69 



he drives home the conclusion that complete self- 
surrender to God is reasonable service. The purpose 
of it all in the mind of God, and therefore the aim 
that men are called on to set before them, is a trans- 
formed life, a renewed mind, a proving in practice 
of the perfect will of God. 

St. Paul begins with the fact of the existing 
Church, and the duties which rest upon all members 
of the Church. The keynote of the whole is mutual 
service. All organisation, all individual gifts of 
teaching, exhorting, liberality, must be subservient 
to this great end. So the first emphasis is laid 
on personal humility and modesty. Because the 
Church is one body of which we each are members, 
because the Church exists for the good of the whole, 
there is no room for self-exaltation. St. Paul is 
himself here an example of humility in the very way 
he recommends the duty. He presumes to advise 
" through the grace given unto me " — not of his own 
wisdom or goodness. The sweet humble way in 
which St. Paul advises is the strongest argument 
of his sermon. The Christian is not to be haughty 
and lofty-minded, but to think soberly of himself, 
with insight into his place in the body of Christ, with 
wise discretion, not asserting himself, considering in 
all things the edification of all. This is essential for 



70 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



the sake of peace in the Church, for the sake of 
order and good government. The Christian must 
not be self -pushing, but should measure his gifts and 
opportunities of service, ever subserving self to the 
good of the whole. There is no scope for selfish 
ambition and boasting ; for the wise man knows that 
his talents and position are not due to merit in him- 
self, but have been given him by God. The fellow- 
ship of faith and life is the common bond, which 
will cure all individual excess. The true solution is 
not shutting the eyes to the fact of difference among 
men : the difference is there, a palpable difference of 
gifts; but they are all given by God, and must all 
be consecrated to God and to the service of others. 
The very finest gifts in the world are ruined by 
vanity and conceit, and their social value is lost. 

The value of a gift is its social value. This is 
why St. Paul insists so much in all his Epistles on 
humility when he refers to the function of the 
Church. Without it the Church cannot do her work. 
This is why St. Paul says in this very letter, " Be not 
high-minded, but fear " and " Be not wise in your 
own conceits " ; and here, " I say," a solemn dec- 
laration as the word implies, " I say unto every 
man among you, not to think of himself more highly 
than he ought to think ; but to think soberly, accord- 



HUMILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE 71 



ing as God hath dealt to every man the measure of 
faith." There is here the true middle course be- 
tween the extremes of false self-esteem and false 
humility. His purpose is to encourage them to serv- 
ice, to cultivate their gifts. Thus, he does not set 
before them as an ideal any kind of self-abnegation 
which would mean the withdrawal of any from 
service. That on the one hand. And on the other 
hand, in order to make that service really effective 
it is necessary to purge it from self-exaltation. 
They are to measure themselves in all sobriety of 
judgment, that without presumption, and yet with- 
out shrinking, they may put all their gifts at the 
service of the Church. 

This touches on one of the greatest difficulties of 
life in every sphere, as well as in the religious. 
From the failures on both sides of the golden mean, 
we see how difficult it is for men to get a just and 
true estimate of self. It is not easy to steer a 
straight course, to avoid Scylla on the one side, and 
Charybdis on the other, to avoid being driven on 
the rocks by undue self-trust, and avoid being 
sucked into the whirlpool by undue self-mistrust. 
For true balance of character and to produce the 
best work in any line, it is necessary for a man to 
have both humility, and also self-confidence. There 



72 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



is a false humility, which weakens a man and un- 
fits him for the duties of life. It is often indistin- 
guishable from moral cowardice, a refusal to put 
forth the best powers, a slackness of moral tissue 
which may be as fatal a form of self-indulgence as 
any other form of it. Some escape the snares of am- 
bition and worldliness by falling willingly into 
meaner snares. If ambition is an infirmity, it at 
least often submits to scorn delights and live labo- 
rious days. If vainglory will make a man think too 
highly of himself; so this cowardice will make him 
think so meanly of himself that he shrinks from all 
high endeavour. It will make him say weakly to 
every noble cause, to every urgent appeal, "It is not 
for me ; such things are too high for me ; I am only 
a very humble member of the family, or the com- 
munity, or the Church." There are many cheap and 
exaggerated reputations in the world; but I am not 
sure but that the reputation for humility may not 
be the cheapest of them all in some cases. To get it, 
you only need to lie low, and say nothing, and never 
take an independent stand. JSTo useful work is pos- 
sible from the man who is so mistrustful of himself 
that he will not even try. 

As there is a false humility which spoils charac- 
ter and work, so there is an overweening conceit 



HUMILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE 73 



which is equally weak and which keeps a man from 
his true place of usefulness. An exaggerated sense 
of personal importance, an inordinate ambition for 
the first places, an egotism which judges of every- 
thing according as it affects that sweet gentleman 
self, a self -pushing, self -advertising spirit which will 
not enter into anything unless self is to be the first 
dog in the hunt — that is the other extreme against 
which St. Paul warns the Koman Christians. We 
see it in life in all quarters, marring harmony 
among brethren, preventing successful co-operation 
in good, a source of strife and failure, hindering 
progress in every branch. We see it in Church and 
State, in the family and the civic life, in business 
and play. Even a football team cannot win a match 
because single members think so highly of them- 
selves, and aim at personal glory instead of the suc- 
cess of the side. We hear it said of a strong man 
in politics, in business, in religion, even in the 
Christian Ministry, that he will not work alongside 
of others, that he is too self-opinionative, that indeed 
nobody can work with him, however good the cause 
may be. Ambition in this sense of self-esteem, is 
not the infirmity of noble minds alone; it fastens 
even more securely on mean minds. 

Now, it is no easy task to which St. Paul sets us 



74 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought 
to think. For it is difficult to convince us that we 
do think more of self than we ought. To himself 
each man is the universe. A man knows his own 
needs and wishes better than he can know those of 
others. His own inclinations make imperious de- 
mands on him. It is easy to become self-centred; 
for nobody is so important to you as you yourself. 

The difficulty is increased if, as we have seen, it 
is at the same time essential not to minimise and 
undervalue any gift a man has. We can see this 
difficulty in every sphere of human life. Take art 
for example. It is necessary for an artist to know 
his limitations, and to submit to them. If he thinks 
he has reached the summit of his art and is filled 
with self-complacency, his work becomes weak and 
worthless. Without humility he can never rise above 
the commonplace. Here, as elsewhere in all hu- 
man endeavours, it is only the meek who inherit the 
kingdom. Yet much feebleness in art and tiresome 
repetition are due to lack of courage, to a false hu- 
mility, a base content with the small. This is only 
an illustration of our text that both modesty and 
confidence are needed. 

St. Paul's whole argument in this passage is that 
God has given to men certain gifts, different in 



HUMILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE 75 



kind and in degree; and it is essential for each to 
know these with accuracy, and to judge of them with 
sobriety, that we may use them effectively. Hu- 
mility is thus not an ignorance, real or affected, of 
what our gifts are, but a proper valuation of them. 
Vanity comes from a false estimate. Think what it 
would mean for the Church as an associated endeav- 
our after the Christian life, if every member looked 
on this subject sacredly, as St. Paul asks. If none 
shirked responsibility ; if none avoided work through 
weakness, and none assumed it through conceit; if 
all thought of mutual service, what diligence would 
be put into our ministering, what patience into our 
teaching, what liberality into our giving, what fer- 
vency into our prayers, what love into our service ! 
If we only thought of the complete good of Christ's 
body the Church, and Christ's strayed sheep in the 
wilderness, how we would comfort and strengthen 
each other; and look for open doors for well-doing! 
The sobriety of judgment about self which St. Paul 
recommends would induce humility; and humility 
would make the whole social atmosphere sweet. 

Candid and courageous self-examination would 
for one thing kill censoriousness, the canker of so 
many Christian characters. An enlightened man, 
who has looked at himself steadily, is more concerned 



76 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



about his own faults than about the faults of others, 
of which he has less knowledge. Censor iousness is 
fed by vanity. The social relations which begin with, 
" conscious as we are of each other's mfirmities," 
are sure to be strained relations. Vanity gets rid 
of the thought of personal weakness by magnifying 
the faults of others; and that is why censoriousness 
can only be cured by adopting St. Paul's method of 
self-examination. Humility is a thing of the spirit, 
and cannot be put on like a cloak. A man does not 
become humble by simulating the form of it, by any 
outside method of repression, such as refusing to 
speak about himself, or by speaking about the bad 
in him. Self-condemnation is often only a subtler 
vanity. It may even be that a man is thinking more 
highly of himself than he ought to think, when he 
imagines that his importance is such that he may 
indulge in the luxury of confession. Poor weak 
human nature can enjoy itself immensely with mak- 
ing confession, as many criminals used to do before 
public execution, making their confession as spicy 
as possible, and getting pleasure from the thought of 
the sensation they would create by the relation of 
their sins and their repentance. 

How are we to attain to the balance of charac- 
ter, which will be both humble and strong, which 



HUMILITY AND SELF-CONFIDENCE 77 

will avoid both self-exaltation and self-abnegation? 
" Lead me to the Rock that is higher than L" We 
need to have heart and life submitted to the search- 
ing light, which while it reveals all flaws, yet in- 
spires with hope. The first vision of Christ seems 
given for our despair; and then He becomes our in- 
spiration. This seems an impossible combination of 
ideas; and yet it is natural. When a man comes 
into the presence of God, the first effect seems 
blighting, and withering. He can only be to himself 
a poor worm of the dust, and realise for the first 
time the absolute nothingness of the human. He is 
emptied of all pretensions, in complete effacement 
of self. The trembling question is, " What is man 
and the son of man ? " Nothing great is possible 
to the man who has not been thus emptied of self, 
beat down, and broken, lying helpless at the feet of 
God. 

But it does not end there. There comes a strange 
revulsion of feeling, and the dawning of a new 
hope. The thought creeps in that it is possible for 
man to have relations with the eternal, that God 
does visit him, and does remember him; till the 
thought becomes a word of encouragement and com- 
mand, " Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will 
speak unto thee." This inspiring consciousness of 



78 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



communion with God strengthens, as well as 
humbles. It is a new stream of vitality flooding 
every vein, and bathing every nerve. And the man 
rises, never again to think presumptuously, not to 
think more highly of himself than he ought ; and yet 
stronger in the knowledge that God thinks him wor- 
thy to be His and to serve Him. True self-surrender 
to God takes away self-exaltation, and at the same 
time saves from despair ; for it shows a man that God 
has a place for him in His purpose of love, and 
crowns him with the nobility of service. This is the 
secret of St. Paul's declaration through the grace 
given unto him, to every man among us, not to think 
more highly of ourselves than we ought, but to think 
soberly, according as God has given to each the 
measure of faith. 



YII 



THE SOLITARINESS OF PRINCIPLE 

A certain people . . . and their laws are diverse from all 
people. — Esther iii. 8. 

In this story of the Persian Empire it is related 
how Hainan, the king's chief favourite, felt insulted 
because Mordecai the Jew neglected to give him 
sufficient honour. His wounded dignity demanded 
revenge, but could not be satisfied with merely in- 
flicting punishment on the man who had offended 
him. To offend the second man in the Empire 
needed a wider punishment than that. Because 
Mordecai was a Jew he would have the indignity 
wiped out by the extermination of the whole tribe. 
So Haman, by a little judicious flattery of the 
king, and by misrepresenting the character of the 
Jewish exiles who lived within the bounds of the 
great Persian Empire, got a decree against them. 
The charge that he brought against them was of 
course not the personal one of injured dignity, but 
that they were a peculiar people, who had laws of 

79 



80 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



their own other than the laws of the Empire, that 
therefore they were a source of danger to the king- 
dom, and it was in the king's interest and in the 
interests of peace to get rid of them. " There is a 
certain people dispersed among the provinces of thy 
kingdom, and their laws are diverse from those of 
every people." It was a false charge, as Hainan 
made it, implying a Jewish conspiracy against the 
empire. It was meant to prejudice the king against 
them, as if they were seditious and practically rebels. 
But in another sense it was true. It is often the true 
word that comes from the mouth of the enemy, in 
another sense than that in which he uses it. Ha- 
inan's accusation was true. The Jews were a sepa- 
rate people even in the midst of the Persian Empire, 
with rites, and ceremonies, and religious beliefs, and 
practices of their own. They were apart from all 
others, peculiar, unique among all the provinces of 
Persia, with separate faith, with strange ways, 
with laws diverse from those of every people. 

The same sort of charge was made against the 
Christian faith in the Roman Empire, with the 
same falseness and evil purpose, and with the same 
inherent truth. Christians were persecuted and 
harried because of their singularity, because they 
were in Rome and yet did not do as the Romans did. 



SOLITARINESS OF PRINCIPLE 81 



They were charged with sedition and rebellion; and 
their singularity gave point to the accusation. Many 
a Hainan vented his personal spite by similar 
charges. The process began early with the Chris- 
tians. At Philippi, when the masters of a maid that 
Paul had cured saw that the hope of their gain was 
gone, they laid hold of Paul and Silas and dragged 
them into the market-place before the rulers; and 
when they had brought them unto the magistrates 
they said, " These men, being Jews, do exceedingly 
trouble our city, and set forth customs, which it is 
not lawful for us to receive, or to observe, being Ro- 
mans." At Thessalonica they were again brought 
before the rulers with the charge, " These all do con- 
trary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is 
another King, one Jesus." It was true that these 
Christians were turning the world upside down. In 
a deeper sense than their accusers knew, or meant, 
the charge was true that they were singular, and 
stood apart from all others, a world within the world 
of Rome, and had laws diverse from those of all 
other people. 

Progress is ever got by dissent. There must be 
points of departure, lines of cleavage, difference ; or 
else there is stagnation and ultimate death. The 
law is universal in the development of life; and it 



82 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

is true in the higher reaches of the spiritual in 
man. It is from singularity that the race has hope 
for the future. Great movements of thought have 
ever sprung from dissent. Men might go on till 
doomsday, repeating the old and the usual, but at 
the best that is only marking time, not progressing. 
Our Christian religion lays greater stress than ever 
on the solitariness of principle, making it even an 
individual thing instead of a racial difference, as 
with the Jews. The Church is set in the world as 
a model for the world, a great object-lesson to induce 
it upward to a higher level of thought and action. 
And what is the Church but a certain people whose 
laws are diverse from those of all other peoples. That 
at least is the standard and ideal for the Church. 
But the Christian faith, with its doctrine of the 
special illumination of the Holy Spirit to the recep- 
tive soul, goes even further, and puts the emphasis 
on the individual, making the soul responsible to 
God alone. It enforces the imperative of principle, 
calling a man out, if need be, to stand alone, making 
him, it may be, diverse from all people for con- 
science' sake. Faith has ever a protest, tacit often, 
but none the less real. 

A great soul is alone. From the very nature of 
the case greatness in anything isolates. The more 



SOLITARINESS OF PRINCIPLE 83 



* exceptional you become, the smaller becomes the 
circle of true relationship. Socially this is so, in its 
own petty way. In a society which is rigidly ruled 
by impassable social laws, the higher up you go, the 
more rarefied the atmosphere becomes, the more se- 
lect the members of the society are and therefore the 
more isolated. Intellectually the same fact is seen. 
The larger the brain, the fewer the mental peers. 
A great scholar can have scholarly intercourse only 
with a limited number. Even morally and spiritu- 
ally there is a very real sense in which this fact is 
true. The higher a man's ideal, the fewer are the 
hearts that can share it. The mass of men have lit- 
tle sympathy with the transcendental thinker. Be- 
hold this dreamer cometh — and they put him in a 
pit. Only with a man's peers can he have full 
communion. The crowd is repelled by too great 
earnestness and zeal. Have you never felt uncom- 
fortable in the presence of an ardent reformer, a 
zealot for something you were lukewarm about? 
You vowed you would give him the cold shoulder 
next time he tried to button-hole you. This may 
not necessarily mean blame to you, for he may have 
been only a faddist or a busybody. But still it illus- 
trates the fact. Kinship of soul is necessary for com- 
munion. I daresay there were many who thought 



84 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



Paul a faddist; certainly he repelled people as 
well as attracted. Few ever had such bitter enemies 
— well-meaning men some of them, who thought him 
dangerous. The laws of his life were too diverse for 
them. It is a commonplace of criticism that the 
great men are often neglected while they live, and 
only discovered when they are dead. The prophet 
runs the risk of having no honour in his own country 
and time. A great man is always, to begin with, in 
a minority. Commonplace men on the whole prefer 
the commonplace. Jeremiah, the most spiritually- 
minded man of his day, had to stand alone. He was 
a tender soul, capable of the truest personal love, 
and yet felt that he was a man of strife and conten- 
tion to the whole land. A man who faces a great 
enterprise must be prepared for defections even 
among his closest friends. The larger the claims 
made on them, the smaller becomes the response. 
The longer the race and the harder the pace, the 
fewer stay out to the goal. Now here, now there, a 
Demas forsakes Paul. He is no longer in full sym- 
pathy with him, or finds the demands on his friend- 
ship too many — at any rate, he goes to his own place. 

We think of Christ's words, with their keen in- 
sight into the deeps of human nature, " Behold the 
hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered, 



SOLITARINESS OF PRINCIPLE 85 



every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone." 
Even before the scattering He was isolated, because 
He was unique. In a sense He was alone all His 
life. Typical of His whole ministry is that striking 
scene when He set His face to go to Jerusalem for 
the last time. The disciples were awed by the very 
look on His face, and drew back to discuss together 
their petty questions about precedence in the king- 
dom, while the Master walked on alone. He had 
thoughts they could not enter into, feelings they 
were strangers to, desires such as they never 
dreamed of ; there were things they might know here- 
after, but could not know then. " They understood 
not His sayings," is a note that can be often made re- 
garding His intercourse with them. Christ's eleva- 
tion of soul and purity of heart meant solitude. He 
was alone in a sense, and a degree, in which neither 
Paul nor any other man could be alone, though 
Paul also in his degree had to pay the penalty of 
greatness. The servant could not escape where the 
Master suffered. It is the law of solitariness of 
principle. 

So, for the making of a great character, there 
must be a certain contempt for criticism. A man 
must be willing to be diverse in his standards of 
judgment and in his way of living. He must dare to 



86 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

be singularly good. " With me," says St. Paul, " it 
is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, 
or of man's judgment." A man must rate current 
opinion at its right value, and must never lay too 
much stress on popular favour and praise. Milton 
expresses this contrast in his own great way: — 

They extol 

Things vulgar, and, well weighed, scarce worth the praise. 

They praise and they admire they know not what, 

And know not whom, but as one leads the other. 

And what delight to be by such extolled, 

To live upon their tongues, and be their talk, 

Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise? 

His lot who dares be singularly good. 

But this singularity must be the fruit of prin- 
ciple to be worth anything ; it must be for conscience' 
sake. The diverseness from all other people must be 
in obedience to laws, which make their irresistible 
appeal to conscience. If it is due to desire for noto- 
riety, or through eccentricity, it is beneath contempt. 
A good deal of dissent from accepted positions has 
an unworthy source, sometimes due to mere temper 
and stupid self-will, or to conceit and love of being 
singular. It is a cheap way to notoriety for a thick- 
skinned man by protesting, and dissenting, and rid- 
ing rough-shod over established custom. But the 
cure for such is simple. This weak craving for notice 



SOLITARINESS OF PRINCIPLE 87 



will be curbed by the thought that all singularity 
carries with it a corresponding responsibility. It 
tunes the life to a high pitch ; and failure is all the 
more pitiful. It demands stern adherence to prin- 
ciple. It fixes a more inflexible standard. Dr. J ohn- 
son, writing of Dean Swift in the Lives of the Poets, 
says : " Singularity, as it implies a contempt of gen- 
eral practice, is a kind of defiance which justly pro- 
vokes the hostility of ridicule; he, therefore, who 
indulges peculiar habits is worse than others, if he 
be not better." This is a true principle of judgment 
in all matters of dissent from established opinion 
and custom. It is a principle which our Lord ap- 
plied to His followers. He made demands on them 
larger and higher than the world asked. " What do 
ye more than others % " He asked. If you are diverse 
from others, if you are set apart from them, and yet 
obey not a grander law, what do ye more than 
others? The only excuse for laws diverse from all 
people is that they should be higher laws, and be 
obeyed with whole-hearted loyalty. And the very 
moral necessity laid upon a man's conscience to be 
singular, the unflinching advocacy of an unpopular 
cause for conscience' sake, gives to the character 
strength and solidity. Such a man, called to live a 
life of protest, serves his generation better than the 



88 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



whole unthinking crowd who are swept along by the 
mere momentum of numbers. He may make mis- 
takes, and lay the emphasis wrongly on accidental 
details sometimes; but better that than dull uni- 
formity, where every coat is cut to the same pattern, 
every opinion and idea is rounded off, and smoothed 
down, and hall-marked. The conventional has al- 
ways its swarm of adherents; the original has to 
fight for even a foothold. 

In the last issue a man is not absolved from com- 
plicity in evil because he has followed a multitude. 
He is called to be loyal to the truth as he knows it, 
as conscience directs, however diverse it seems to 
make his way from the common path. However 
many are the temptations on the one hand to cranki- 
ness, and eccentricity, and conceit, far more deadly 
are the temptations on the other side, to weakness, 
and cowardice, and pliable principles, and the sti- 
fling of conscience. Young men are sometimes 
charged with forwardness, and too great desire to be 
singular, and to take up a position different from 
the conventional. That may be so with a few; but 
with most the very opposite is the charge that could 
be substantiated, of moral cowardice, of weakness in 
following their own instincts. They are too easily 
cowed into giving up their principles, too easily 



SOLITARINESS OF PRINCIPLE 89 



moved by a sneer, too easily brow-beaten by a ma- 
jority. If in the presence of temptation they stood 
to their guns, there would be more moral victories, 
and a finer type of manhood developed amongst us. 
If we were less afraid of singularity for conscience' 
sake, if we lived to God and not to our fellowmen, 
there would be less marking time and more march- 
ing in the battlefield of life. 

Be true to your best self ; be true to principle ; be 
true to God. Let the world stand where it will, stand 
you on the side of whatsoever things are pure, hon- 
ourable, just, lovely, of good report. Be not ashamed 
of the Gospel of Christ, which is the power of God 
unto salvation. Work not with eye-service as men- 
pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of 
God from the heart. When sinners entice, consent 
ye not. Give Christ His place in the midst, the 
throne of the heart, the judgment-seat of the 
Church; and the charge spoken in blame will be an 
eternal glory, " a certain people whose laws are di- 
verse from all people." 



VIII 

THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 

The way of transgressors is hard. — Pbovebbs xiii. 15. 

The actual words of this proverb are difficult, and 
it looks as if the text were corrupt. The Revised 
Version translates it " the way of the treacherous is 
rugged." With the best emendations of the text it 
may be impossible to make sure of how this partic- 
ular proverb actually ran. But fortunately there is 
nothing at stake in the way of doctrine. The words 
I have taken as text are no isolated words, and the 
thought they contain does not depend on the transla- 
tion of a single proverb. I could easily have found 
other sayings from this very chapter, without looking 
any further, sayings which simply repeat in other 
forms the thought of this verse. " A righteous man 
hateth lying, but a wicked man cometh to shame." 
" Righteousness guardeth him that is upright in the 
way, but wickedness overthroweth the sinner." 
" The light of the righteous rejoiceth, but the lamp 
of the wicked shall be put out" " The law of the 

90 



THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 91 



wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares 
of death." " Evil pursueth sinners, but the righteous 
shall be recompensed with good." These are all 
taken from this same chapter; and our special text 
thus not only agrees with one stream of teaching in 
the Bible but is in keeping with the special somewhat 
prudential morality of this chapter from which it is 
taken. 

I choose the words though they are differently 
translated in the Revised Version, and though they 
are even pronounced untranslatable altogether by 
some critics, because the words themselves are so 
common and express so simply and clearly an ac- 
cepted fact of moral life. They have been used as 
the headline of copybooks for generations, and have 
been quoted till they are embedded in the common 
morality of the man in the street. When a man 
breaks the law, gives way to sudden temptation, em- 
bezzles a trust, or the like, and then in consequence 
is beset with difficulty and face to face with exposure 
and shame, and at last is confronted by the avenger 
and the expected disgrace and punishment are 
meted out, the words that come to us to sum up the 
moral of the situation are that the way of trans- 
gressors is hard. 

It is more on the surface than other more pro- 



92 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



found judgments of the Bible, such as " The wages 
of sin is death." Being more of a surface judgment 
it has naturally more currency among us ; for at the 
best we can only judge of the surface of life. When 
we see a man reaping thus publicly the fruit of his 
own misdeed, we think of all he has suffered long be- 
fore the crisis came, the shifts he employed to escape 
discovery, his constant alarms and fears. We imagine 
him walking on his chosen way, but never with peace 
of heart, on the alert at every touch, never knowing 
when the hand will be laid on his shoulder that tells 
him the sorry game is up. We can imagine him even 
almost glad that the worst has come and that his sin 
has found him out; for at least he will be done with 
all the pain of suspense. The actual punishment 
meted out by the broken law is not the only, nor 
always the worst, element of all that goes to prove 
the truth of the proverb that the way of transgress- 
ors is hard. The words are thus a part of our con- 
ventional ethics, rising to our lips to point a moral. 

All our great dramatists and novelists preach this 
one sermon. What studies in nemesis Shakespeare 
has given in King Eichard III, in Macbeth, in all his 
great tragedies! Belentlessly, unerringly he shows 
the disclosure of the wages of sin. In Eichard III 
he gives a picture of the complete villain, panoplied 



THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 93 



against remorse, callous, cruel, selfish, an artist in 
crime, disavowing even the ordinary restraints of 
conscience, asserting 

Conscience is but a word that cowards use, 
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. 

He knows himself to be subtle, false, and treacher- 
ous. Without compunction, without natural weak- 
ness, without pity he goes on from crime to crime and 
from success to success. There seems no way to get 
at him, no way even to truly punish him, impene- 
trable in his utter callousness. And yet with match- 
less skill and keenest moral insight Shakespeare 
makes us feel, and in the climax of retribution rep- 
resents Richard himself as feeling, that nemesis has 
been dogging him all his life, that his way has been a 
hard way and its end destruction. The irony of it 
all makes us almost pity the miserable wretch who 
is heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, 
though we too breathe in relief at last as Richmond 
comes with the news : 

God and your arms be praised, victorious friends; 
The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. 

All the great masters who have depicted human 
life, poets, novelists, dramatists, bring out in varied 
form the invariable wages of sin ; and we can under- 



94 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



stand why George Eliot, who has herself given us 
some tragic studies, should say, " Nothing in this 
world is worth doing wrong for." You could finish 
up all their studies of life with this concluding 
moral, that the way of transgressors is hard. It can- 
not be simply a surface truth when we find all these 
great observers uniting in the one moral of life. 

There are many illustrations of the proverb to be 
seen in our own daily experience, in business life, in 
professional life, in private and public life. Every 
daily newspaper furnishes new illustrations. Every 
town can show its victim, of a young man who has 
begun the work of life in innocence and hope, stray- 
ing from the path of probity, entangling himself 
with many sorrows and difficulties, ending in disgrace 
and misery and shame. I could paint pictures to you 
from real life, of cases I have known, that might 
sound a little sensational but whose substantial truth 
you would admit. I could take you to hospitals and 
asylums and prisons and tell you chapters from real 
life-stories with gruesome endings of disease and 
death, which would make you say yourself as the 
only fitting commentary, Truly the way of trans- 
gressors is hard. 

But life is not run on these simple lines, else there 
never could be any doubt nor possibly any tempta- 



THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 95 



tion. It is not the case that men and events resolve 
themselves so easily into two distinct sections. There 
are not only many exceptions to this item of common 
ethics, but if we look closer we are sometimes 
tempted to think that there is no rule at all and that 
the moral world is topsy-turvy. The Old Testament 
writers who held most firmly to the truth of our prov- 
erb were confronted by these manifold exceptions 
and doubts. They saw the wicked prosper and the 
righteous suffer. We too, as we look on life, cannot 
be sure that the way of transgressors is always hard. 
It often seems, and is, a broad way and an easy, while 
the other is the hard and narrow path. It is true 
that all our earthly law is made of express purpose 
to make the way of transgressors hard, but it so often 
fails of its purpose. It sometimes even brings penal- 
ties to men of conscience, and the meshes of the legal 
net are not fine enough to catch all offenders against 
true justice. Even in the breaking of physical and 
moral law the penalties are often so unfairly di- 
vided. A sin of ignorance is as savagely treated as 
a sin of wilful evil. There seem no distinctions, 
none of the discriminations we feel to be necessary 
for justice. An evil man who plays his cards care- 
fully can get off, and a mere blunderer is caught in 
the wheels and mangled. Take any sin you like, can 



96 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



you say that punishment is measured out in due pro- 
portion to desert ? Can you say that the way of the 
transgressor is made hard according to the quality 
of the transgression? Of our earthly penalties and 
social punishments can you say that they are tem- 
pered to the colour and degree of the particular 
guilt? Is the light of the righteous always a bright 
flame and is the lamp of the wicked always put out ? 
Is the good man always recompensed with good and 
the bad man always brought to shame ? 

Neither in our day nor in any day has this been 
so ; and so we take the words that the way of trans- 
gressors is hard, and look a little deeper into them 
to see if there is truth deep down as well as on the 
surface. The truth on the surface we have already 
seen, though it is not invariable. But the very word 
transgression suggests to us an element of hardness 
more constant than the surface truth. To transgress 
means to pass over or beyond, to get across, and so 
to violate bounds, such as the limits of a law. Trans- 
gression brings before us what a man has to sur- 
mount, something he has to climb or leap or get over 
somehow by effort. There are bounds natural and 
acquired which a man must break through to trans- 
gress, and it is always hard to do that. In a sense 
sin is easy and seems even natural. It appears 



THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 97 



to be along the line of least resistance. You only 
need to let yourself go with the crowd without the 
pain of thought or decision, without breaking with 
any pleasant custom or habit or companionship. 
The way is easy and broad, and it is the narrow way 
that seems the hard way. It is simple and easy to 
appease the lower nature, and know nothing of the 
long passion of the saints, no tears, no drops as it 
were of blood, no soaring aspirations with which to 
keep up, no large ideal for which to strive. It is not 
the way of transgressors that is hard, but the other 
way that is so straight and strict. 

But that is only a surface view of human nature 
and life. That is to leave out of account the other 
factors, the higher side of your being as truly part 
of your being as any physical appetite. That is to 
leave out of account instincts and memories and stir- 
rings of soul, all that is now become part of your 
spiritual constitution. Transgression is not only 
want of conformity to God's will, but also it is to do 
violence to your own nature. You have to break 
bounds to transgress. There are barriers which are 
in our life through heredity, through education, 
through environment, or however they have come, 
barriers in memory, in instincts, in conscience, in 
the law written on the heart. There are very real 



98 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



barriers and difficulties in our nature which we must 
break down before we can transgress, and' which 
make the way of transgressors hard though there 
should be no outward penalty. If it should never 
end in any sort of outward exposure or punishment, 
yet the violation of moral law carries its own sting. 
" Whose breaketh a hedge a serpent shall bite 
him." 

Life for you means an enclosure with definite lim- 
its on certain sides. There is a hedge confining you. 
You are restricted by the moral laws of life, and 
even by the social rules of your upbringing. You are 
free, yet bound. You may kick over the traces and 
make for what you think liberty, but not without 
pain and danger and hardship can it be done. You 
who have been hedged round with precept and ex- 
ample, with religious training, with Christian edu- 
cation, who have been hedged round with law and 
# with love, you cannot transgress without hardship : — 
" Whoso breaketh a hedge a serpent shall bite him." 
It may be that others who have known no better can 
find the broad way easy, but it is not so for you. 
Never think it. The inheritance of ages does not 
come for nothing. You are born the heir of your 
Father's house, and you have to do despite to your 
own nature if you refuse. You may go to the far 



THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 99 



country, but the hungry soul is brought to confess 
that it is not his own country. In Bunyan's great 
allegory whenever the pilgrims get out of the way 
they come to grief, wherever they stray from the 
path into what looks an easier way it is made hard 
to them in one way or another. Remember when 
they went over the stile into the grounds of Doubting 
Castle the owner whereof was Giant Despair, or 
when they followed the Flatterer, a man black of 
flesh but covered with a very light robe, and were en- 
tangled in a net. Others may transgress and not feel 
this particular hardship and difficulty to which we 
are referring, but not you who have ever walked a 
pilgrim on the King's highway, not you who have 
ever seen the vision, not you who have been com- 
passed about with mercy. For you it is solemnly 
true that the way of transgressors is hard. Before 
you can do it you have to get over some barriers that 
should have safeguarded you from danger. It is 
hard for you to silence the reproving voice of con- 
science, hard to throttle every high thought and 
noble instinct, hard to bury the memory of the past, 
to deny your best nature, hard to forget early edu- 
cation, to forget a mother's prayers, hard to quench 
the Spirit of God, to blot out the vision of the face 
of Christ with a look in the eyes that breaks the 



100 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



heart. It is hard for thee, O human soul, to kick 
against the pricks. The way of transgressors is hard. 

" My son, enter not into the path of the wicked, 
and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass 
not by it, turn from it and pass away. The way of 
the wicked is as darkness. But the path of the just 
is as the shining light that shineth more and more 
unto the perfect day." 



IX 



SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION 

Then said I, Ah Lord God! they say of me, Is he not a 
speaker of parables? — Ezekiel xx. 49. R. V. 

In spite of the first partial exile, in which Ezekiel 
shared, by which the King and nobles and natural 
leaders of the Jews were deported to Babylon, the 
great religions lessons which the prophets sought to 
teach the people were rejected. Both the exiles and 
those left at home buoyed themselves up with the 
vain thought that everything would turn out all 
right ; for was not Jerusalem the Holy City still re- 
maining, and were not the tokens of their old nation- 
ality still left to them ? Ezekiel, who for years had 
preached the inevitable destruction of Jerusalem and 
the complete fall and exile of Judah, was disbelieved 
and despised. He was only an irreconcilable croaker. 

Now when at last under the influence of their shal- 
low optimism Judah again rebelled, Nebuchadnezzar 
set the armed might of his Empire against the rebels. 
The people still hoped that something would happen 

101 



102 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



to break the chains which bound hapless Judah, and 
would make her once more a free independent na- 
tion. Ezekiel repeated the judgment of doom, and 
we can imagine something of the impatience and 
anger with which he was met by the excited people. 
When the vision came to him of a complete destruc- 
tion as of a forest on fire, the terrible conflagration 
devouring even every green tree, a flaming flame that 
shall not be quenched, he knew that nobody would be- 
lieve him, and that they would call it just another 
effort of the literary artist in him to put his croaking 
in a new and startling form. He seems to have hesi- 
tated to express his vision in the exact manner it 
came to him. He feels it almost useless to convince 
them that he spoke the truth of God. Men will pass 
by his warning with a sneer about himself. He knew 
they would discount his words, and call it only an- 
other trick of his old manner. 

One of the burdens of every original teacher and 
thinker and artist is the feeling that the truth he has 
to declare seems so dependent on the limitations 
of his particular mental equipment. He can only 
utter his message according to the bent of his own 
individuality. He has his own manner of speech, 
his own way of expressing himself. And the fear 
constantly strikes him that his manner may obscure 



SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION 103 



the truth, and men will pass by the reality, and think 
of it as only another evidence of what they call his 
mannerism. Ezekiel seems to have felt this fear. 
He knows that his way of speaking is in figures, 
similitudes, parables, and he is fully conscious of the 
popular objection which his manner created. So, 
when this appalling vision of the destruction of Jeru- 
salem came to him, he is well aware that the people 
will discount what he has to say, and will repeat the 
parrot-cry that it is only another of his strange liter- 
ary figures. 

It is to him a heavy burden that his own peculi- 
arities of mind and method should seem to stand in 
the way of his message being received. With a cry 
of anguish he seems to ask to be relieved from the 
necessity of speaking — but the prophetic fire is in 
Ms bones also, and will not let him be silent. " Then 
said I, Ah Lord God! they say of me, Is he not a 
speaker of parables ? " 

Of course the suggestion in the taunt, which gives 
it its sting, is that his words are only figures of speech 
without any reality behind them. The pain of the 
thought to the prophet is that the people will make 
the form of his words an excuse for not really listen- 
ing. The truth he has to declare is unpleasant to 
them, and they pretend they do not understand, and 



104 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



ride away on a sneer from even considering them. 
With cheap sarcasm they shelter behind the assumed 
difficulty of the words, and pretend they do not un- 
derstand. It is a popular device, but never so popu- 
lar as in dealing with matters of religion, and the 
keenest pain that can come to a preacher is the knowl- 
edge that there are some who escape the divine ap- 
peal because of some fault or insufficiency in him, 
that there are some who are offended by his manner 
of presenting the truth, some even who have excuse 
for despising the very water of life because of the 
earthen vessel that brings it. 

The experience is not confined to religious teach- 
ers. It is the fate of every interpreter of truth, 
whatever be the medium in which he works ; and es- 
pecially is it the fate of every original thinker. 
" We mistake men's diseases," says Richard Baxter, 
" when we think there needeth nothing to cure them 
of their errors but the evidence of truth. Alas, there 
are many distempers of mind to be removed before 
they receive that evidence." One of these distem- 
pers certainly is making so much of the personal equa- 
tion of the man who teaches. Let a man paint much, 
or write much, or speak much, and people think 
more of his manner than of what he has to reveal. 
Their criticisms are almost altogether of his methods ; 



SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION 105 



and many are offended because they do not like his 
methods. 

Wagner, who at least had the zeal of an Apostle, 
had to hear much of his work dismissed as Wag- 
nerian. Reams and reams have been filled with idle 
talk about Browning's style. Anything that Carlyle 
said was discounted as Carlylesque. The charlatan 
in all the arts is of course vain of such notice, and 
strives by all dodges to create outre effects to com- 
mand such attention ; but the man with even a spark 
of the prophetic instinct is sick at heart that it should 
be supposed that he had worked for that, and sick at 
heart that men should never get past his method of 
utterance to the living truth he has striven to 
utter. 

But in religion more than in all other regions is 
this offence disastrous ; for the utterance of religious 
truth asks not for admiration, or approval, or even in- 
tellectual agreement, but spiritual assent, the thrill of 
soul which recognises the truth and bends to its do- 
minion. The offence here is greatest, because in the 
very nature of the case, unless the truth is spiritually 
discerned it cannot but appear as a parable, a simili- 
tude of words without reality behind it. If it is not 
welcomed by the very intuition of the soul that 
hears ; if it does not make its appeal directly as truth, 



106 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



it can have no real meaning, and can be dismissed 
as idle talk. 

Eeligious truth is not like mathematical proposi- 
tions, which, if they are accepted at all, must be ac- 
cepted in the same way. If you accept the definition 
of a straight line, a straight line must be the same 
thing practically to all of you, however you may pre- 
fer to define it. Two and two as four, if you accept 
that, t are always four, and in the same way to all of 
you. But spiritual truth is a matter of spiritual in- 
terpretation to each soul. The discernment of it is 
a spiritual thing. Its fulness can only be hinted 
at by any human words; and all who do not see 
it and accept it, can look on these words only as 
parables. 

Even apart from revealed truth this is so, in the 
interpretation of anything that exists. The same 
thing will appeal differently to different people ac- 
cording to capacity, understanding, experience. One 
may look on a flower with the eye of a florist, another 
with the eye of a market-gardener, another of a bot- 
anist, another of an artist. Buttercups and daisies 
may be a nuisance to a farmer, and a delight to a 
child. Roses may be considered from the commercial 
standpoint, or the aesthetic, or the spiritual. As with 
Wordsworth's Peter Bell, 



SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION 107 



In vain through every changeful year 
Did Nature lead him as before; 
A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more. 

To speak of it in any other way would be to speak 
in parables, meaningless. 

If this is so in such things, how much more is the 
difficulty of finding a common denominator when we 
speak of the unseen and eternal. Every man who 
has tried to make plain the things of God knows that 
his way of speaking will be an offence to some, who 
will meet his words with blank unintelligence, or 
with complete misunderstanding, or with a jest of in- 
difference ; and all such can enter somewhat into the 
pain of Ezekiel, when he cried, " Ah Lord God ! they 
say of me, Is he not a speaker of parables ? " Our 
Lord warned His disciples of this, and of the indif- 
ference with which the world would receive their 
message. " Unto you," he said to the inner circle, " it 
is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God, 
but unto them that are without all these things are 
done in parables." Religion can only be a matter of 
inward apprehension, moral adjustment to the truth, 
spiritual susceptibility to the religious impression. 
The distinction between men, involved in our Lord's 
saying, is not an arbitrary one, but an essential one, 



108 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



dependent on the state of the heart. This itself is an 
eternal truth of religion, that it is a question of 
the heart, a question of holy affections. Christ 
did not arbitrarily determine that there should be 
some that were without, whom His words only 
mystified. 

The distinction is a fact of life in all regions intel- 
lectual and moral, as well as spiritual. His words 
were only the occasion which tested men, and divided 
them into the two classes. We speak of judging 
truth, but also truth is judging us. By hidden al- 
chemy it discovers whether we are in sympathy with 
it, whether our life is in unison with it. We are not 
the standard of truth by which it is measured, 
Truth is its own standard, and measures us. It is 
true that we have to judge Christ ; but far truer is it 
that Christ is judging us ; our attitude to Him is judg- 
ing us. When Christ spoke of the effect of His par- 
ables, He meant that they acted like sieves sifting 
out the different kinds of hearers by the influence pro- 
duced on them. Susceptible minds received the im- 
pression. Childlike hearts opened to let Him in. 
Receptive souls felt His powerful appeal, and quiv- 
ered in restless eagerness, till they found rest in 
Him. Some found in Him the way, the truth, the 
life. Others said of Him, as their fathers said of the 



SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION 109 



prophets before Him, " Is He not a speaker of par- 
ables?" 

When the verities of the faith appear to you as 
mysteries, when the unseen makes no appeal to you, 
when spiritual truth sounds like an idle tale, when all 
religion seems like playing with words, when God, 
and the human soul, the divine Christ, and the life 
eternal appear to you but figures of speech, with no 
reality for which they stand, no passion of truth 
which the words half conceal but also half reveal, if 
in Gospel and Epistle, in the burning lips and 
gleaming eyes of men, you do not feel Christ's im- 
perious claims, if you do not see His transcendent 
beauty, if you do not hear His insistent appeal, 
what can we say, but that, seeing, you see, and do not 
perceive, and hearing, you hear, and do not under- 
stand ? 

All spiritual truth must appear as parables to 
all who do not know the language, to all who can- 
not recognise the accents of truth even in forms that 
sound harsh or uncomely to them. The principle of 
spiritual interpretation is ever the same, — by spir- 
itual discernment. " Know ye not this parable % 
And how will ye know all parables % " asked our 
Lord. The Christian position is not reached by an 
intellectual process. It comes to the simple, humble, 



110 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



responsive heart. To know God gives at least the 
capacity to recognise the things of God. If 
you feel like an outsider in the Courts of the 
Lord, if in the presence of Jesus you feel that you 
have no relationship to Him, if at the mention of re- 
ligious truth you feel that you are among those that 
are without, who care not for these things, or at 
least understand not these things, do not ride away 
from the appeal by a cheap sarcasm. Say not, u Is 
he not a speaker of parables ? " as if that absolved 
you from further concern about it all. Turn to 
Christ with a heart-pang that your soul should be 
so seared and hardened. Bend to Christ humbly, 
and He will unstop the deaf ears and unseal the 
blind eyes, and give you a heart to understand; for 
He will take you into the Holy of Holies, into 
the very presence-chamber of the King, and reveal 
the Father to you, homeless, fatherless child of His. 
Christ is His own evidence. He brings conviction 
with Him. And when He comes the music of His 
words will touch chords of infinite harmony in your 
heart. And unto you it will be given to know the 
mystery of the Kingdom of God no longer in 
parables. 



X 



CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY 

Speaking the truth in love. — Ephesiajjs iv. 15. 

Although this is not a controversial Epistle in the 
sense in which the Epistle to the Galatians is con- 
troversial, there is an underlying fear of division 
and strife being introduced into the Church through 
the divisive courses of mischief-makers. This un- 
spoken fear makes St. Paul insist on the unity of the 
faith, the common elements by virtue of which they 
are Christians. Amid all the diversity of opera- 
tions in the Church there is one body, and one 
Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
and Father of all, who is above all and through all 
and in all. The different gifts possessed by different 
members of the Church are all designed for the one 
sole end, for the perfecting of the saints, for the edify- 
ing of the body of Christ. The whole Church is 
meant to be carried forward and upward in the unity 
of the faith to a higher level of Christian living and 
Christian character. Christ is the beginning, and 

Christ is the end. He is the source of the unity, and 

111 



112 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



He is the fulfilment for which it is designed. We 
are expected to grow up out of all the immaturity 
and fickleness of childhood to full-grown men, grow 
up into Him in all things who is the head, even 
Christ. 

One of the stages of the growth, as it is one of the 
methods by which the growth is attained, is follow- 
ing truth, or " speaking truth, in love." This is 
the connection of our text in the sublime passage in 
which St. Paul speaks of the constitution of the 
Church. It is quite evident that Paul anticipated 
controversy and strife in the process of this growth 
to which he looked forward; for the truth-speaking 
is set against the evil efforts and cunning craftiness 
of men who seek to subvert the foundations of their 
faith in Christ. Against such cunning craftiness 
they must oppose the truth, which means conflict and 
controversy. The Apostle's anticipation has been 
amply realised in the history of the Church. 

From one aspect that whole history is a record of 
strife — and strife among brethren, rival factions, 
rival doctrines, rival systems of government. It is 
useless to recall the dead and buried controversies 
of the past centuries, but every student of Church 
history knows that not an item of the creed was 
accepted by the Church without the fiercest quarrels 



CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY 113 



and the keenest discussions — sometimes even to the 
drawing of the sword and the shedding of blood. 
It is not necessary to rake among the embers of 
burnt-out controversies to establish the truth of 
Paul's anticipation; for we have among ourselves 
evidences enough what violent strife and disputation 
can be caused by religion. Christian Churches are 
divided on points of doctrine, and points of worship, 
and points of government ; and even within the same 
Church, as in the Church of England to-day, there 
are parties arrayed against each other about ritual, 
and even about the sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
itself, which is the one thing which ought to unite all 
Christians. Many of our churches were born in the 
throes of conflict, and cradled in controversy. Men, 
following truth, constrained to speak truth, have had 
to live at variance with brethren, whom they re- 
spected, but with whom they could not agree. From 
one aspect the history of the Church looks like a 
dreary waste of polemic, and through the Christian 
centuries we can still hear the jarring discord of end- 
less dissensions. Lord Rosebery in a very beautiful 
speech at Epsom at the opening of a Church-room 
referred to a controversy in the English Church at 
the time, about incense and lights in worship, and 
said, " Theological discussions are, for some reason 



114 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



unknown to the layman, conducted with more asper- 
ity than any other form of discussion. Why that 
should be so, why the Gospel that came to preach 
peace and goodwill in this world should be so often 
the means of provoking the most violent disputa- 
tions, is a problem I confess I am unable to solve." 
It is a problem above us all, but two things may be 
said, which, though they do not excuse the heat of 
religious controversy, help to explain it. 

One is that there is no subject to religious men 
so near their heart. It is because the issues are so 
great, because it is a matter of life and death to 
them, that they take it so seriously. If they cared 
less, they could be more dispassioned and cool. It 
was because Athanasius realised the tremendous im- 
port of the creed for which he contended that he was 
willing to fight on, though it meant Athanasius 
against the world. It was because religion was 
everything to Luther and Calvin and John Knox 
that they dared so much, and suffered so much, and 
spent their lives in controversy. If they had not had 
such intense convictions they would not have been 
so concerned about the purity of religion, and could 
have let things swing as they hung. There is a fine 
easy tolerance which many profess, which looks 
down upon the fever and zeal of others with philo- 



CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY 115 



sophic scorn, but the tolerance is only another name 
for indifference. They do not understand why men 
should wage relentless warfare about certain ecclesi- 
astical issues, because they do not really understand 
the issues. Even the quarrels in England about in- 
cense and lights in worship, which seem so petty put 
that way, have far-reaching roots in creed, and in 
the long run will have far-reaching effects on charac- 
ter and conduct. What is at stake to men of insight 
is not merely the details of incense and lights, but 
the theory of the ministry as a priesthood, with mag- 
ical powers over the sacraments, and divine powers 
over the conscience of members of the Church. This 
accounts for a little of the asperity of tone and the 
keenness of the fight. Upholders of truth feel that 
truth is all-important, and so are compelled to fol- 
low truth wherever it leads them. 

Another explanation of the sharpness of religious 
controversy is the very nearness and common stand- 
ing of the parties. The bitterest disputes in life oc- 
cur among those who are nearest each other in spirit. 
You do not quarrel with the man with whom you 
have little or no communication. It is not the man 
in the street who chafes your soul, and has power to 
ruffle your temper. You can afford to despise or 
neglect him. It is the man of your own household, 



116 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



with whom you have points of contact. You only 
make enemies among your friends. This is so in all 
domains of life as well as in religion. A quarrel 
between a Democrat and a Republican is never so 
acute, has not so many barbs and pricks and spines 
in it as a quarrel between two Democrats. Not the 
outsider, but the familiar friend who lifts up his 
heel, has power to hurt. Home-quarrels of all kinds 
are according to the facts of human nature the bit- 
terest of all ; and Church disputes are of the class of 
home-quarrels. 

All this does not excuse the asperity of theological 
discussion, it only helps to explain it. With all the 
faults of much religious controversy, its wronghead- 
edness, its false emphasis on what is accidental and 
not essential, its forgetfulness of the charity which 
suffers long and is kind, yet it has often been in- 
spired with sincere zeal for righteousness, and with 
earnest desire for truth. Truth at every hazard; 
justice though the heavens fall ; against the cunning 
craftiness of men whereby they lie in wait to deceive, 
truth is the panoply, speaking the truth fearlessly. 
Truth has ever a face for the foe, opposing in Bacon's 
phrase the lie that sinketh in and settleth in the mind 
and doeth the hurt. There are times when tolerance 
is sin, when a true man must range himself among 



CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY 117 



one of two opposing forces. There are times when 
truth must be defended strenuously, unreservedly; 
times when neutrality is not wisdom hut cowardice ; 
times when the true word must be spoken though 
thrones shake; when falsehood must be unmasked, 
and attacked at any and every cost — except the cost 
of love. 

When the Apostle adds " in love " to his admoni- 
tion to follow truth, he is not limiting the idea of 
truth-speaking; he is really extending it; he is de- 
fining what it means. It is here that all the mis- 
takes of religious controversies are made. Men in 
the stress of the fight get so easily hard, and bitter, 
and revengeful, and censorious ; and even when they 
are right, the bloom departs from the truth. Truth- 
speaking is a manner as well as a matter. It cannot 
be divorced from its spirit. Truth-speaking in the 
Christian sense cannot be done at all without love. 
The object of it is not to confound and convince 
men; but to win them. Hard and loveless truth is 
not truth at all. This is the condemnation of so 
much controversy. The spirit of it is wrong, some- 
times even when the cause is right. Truth is a 
subtle thing; it enters into the fibre of mind and 
life. To extend the truth falsely is to lose it. The 
religion which needs, or receives, support by fagot 



118 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



and stake is false, or is falsely "understood. Truth- 
speaking must be conditioned by love to save it from 
the grossest errors. Only love will teach us wisdom 
in speech, teach us to avoid the excesses and even 
the brutalities into which partisans are so often 
hurried. It will save us from the virulence of per- 
sonal disputes. It will teach us what are the real 
essentials of religion, and keep us from laying stress 
on the accidental. 

Most of our disputations are beyond the point. 
So much of it is a matter of wrong emphasis. We 
put the accent on the wrong syllable, like a foreigner 
speaking English. To speak a foreign tongue with 
anything like accuracy we must live among the peo- 
ple, till the language saturates our ear. If we lived 
in the atmosphere of Christ's love, and not merely 
paid a hasty visit to it now and again, if Christ's 
love were the climate of our soul, truth-speaking 
would be our mother-tongue, and we would not make 
so many mistakes of emphasis. Truth would be 
bathed in love, till the two became as one. We 
would see that truth is love, and that without love 
there is no truth. 

This does not mean emptying truth of its force. 
It would strip much of what passes for truth-speak- 
ing of its barbarities ; but to truth itself it would give 



CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY 119 



wings. We are inclined to look upon the fanatic 
as the type of the truth-speaker, the man of red-hot 
zeal who splutters forth his ardent rage against men 
and things he hates. It is because we are so prone to 
one-sidedness. But true culture in anything is per- 
fect sanity, balance of power, proportional develop- 
ment of the whole man. We need proportional de- 
velopment in the spiritual sphere also — love strength- 
ened and stiffened by truth; truth ennobled and in- 
spired by love. The men who have influenced you, 
if you think of it, have had both elements in their 
character. They were men of principle, of strong 
character, with the wise large vision and the wise 
large tolerance of a loving heart. John Stuart 
Blackie, beloved by all who knew him, made this text 
of ours the motto of his life, and used to write it in 
its Greek form on every envelope he addressed. It 
was the key-note of his character, which combined 
in a way, not common in that grey north country, the 
perfervidum ingenium Scotorum with a winsome 
genial sweetness of soul. It is no weakening of the 
life to add gentleness to strength. It is only then 
that strength is perfected. Think how our Master 
combined in its perfectness both elements; with 
truth and love the twin passions of His heart, His 
life clear and bright as the sunlight — and as warm! 



120 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



If this qualification of love were always made, 
how much of our truth-speaking on which we pride 
ourselves would be true % If we thought less of put- 
ting others in the wrong, and more of winning them 
to the right; if we in all our disputings thought less 
of personal triumph and more of truth, would there 
be so many conflicts among brethren, after all ? We 
have not learned Christ, if we have not learned 
something of the love that thinketh no evil, the love 
that beareth and endureth and hopeth, the love that 
seeketh not her own, and is not easily provoked. 

There comes to us through tradition the pathetic 
picture of St. John, who had lived through the first 
fierce struggle of the early Church, with scars of 
fight on his heart, having drunk to the dregs of the 
cup of Christ's suffering, too old and frail to preach 
to the congregation, carried in to say to the Church, 
" My little children, love one another, for love is of 
God." When earthly ambitions are balked and dis- 
appointed, or when they are fulfilled and the heart is 
still empty ; when the cup of earthly joy is withheld, 
or when it is given and the soul is still unsatisfied; 
when the fires of human passion die out; when we 
look at life steadily and on every side of it ; a man 
comes to see that nothing else counts but this. If we 
have gained everything and lost this, what have we 



CHRISTIAN CONTROVERSY 121 

gained % How our ambitions wither before the glory 
of this ideal! How our common aims dwindle and 
fade in the presence of its serene beauty! 
How poor and petty seem our selfish schemes, 
our personal rivalries, our strife of tongues, 
our self-assertion, and our weary noises! We 
speak about maintaining the truth, and extend- 
ing the truth, as if it were a logical proposition, or 
a mathematical theorem, that we can learn and some- 
how drum into people's heads. It is a subtler thing 
than that, elusive to the coarse touch, a spiritual 
thing to be spiritually discerned. The only means 
of attaining it is by love : the only medium of propa- 
gating it is love. You have not begun to know even 
the rudiments of Christian truth, till you have 
opened your heart to Christ's love. And you can 
do nothing to extend that truth, except through love. 
Even the statement of truth has social aspects and 
is judged by its social fruits. Service is the test of 
Christ in speech as of Christian life. 

" Speaking the truth in love, may we grow up in 
all things into Him who is the head, even Christ." 

Be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. 



XI 

THE ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT 

And Esau said, Behold I am at the point to die: and what 
profit shall this birthright do to met — Genesis xxv. 32. 

We cannot suppress a natural sympathy witH 
Esau in this scene between the two brothers. He 
seems as much sinned against as sinning, and in 
comparison with the cunning, crafty character of 
Jacob he appears the better of the two. His very 
faults lean to virtue's side, we think, as we look at 
his bold, manly, impulsive figure. There is nothing 
of the cold calculating selfishness, the astute trickery, 
the determination to get his pound of flesh, which 
make his brother appear mean beside him. With 
our swift and random and surface judgments we are 
inclined to think it unjust that Esau should be set 
aside in the great history of grace for one who could 
be guilty of both malice and fraud in advancing his 
own interests. We are not at present dealing with 
the character of Jacob or we would see that this 
hasty judgment, true so far as it goes, is something 

123 



ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT 123 



less even than half the truth, and that though he 
here and elsewhere sinned and was punished through 
all his life for his subtlety and selfishness, yet he 
was not the monster of unbrotherly malice merely 
which this scene might suggest, and that he had 
qualities of heart and spirit which made it inevitable 
that he, and not Esau, should be chosen for the line 
of God's purpose. Our subject is Esau and his 
weakness and fall in the presence of his overmaster- 
ing temptation. 

Esau's good qualities are very evident, being of 
the kind easily recognised and easily popular among 
men, the typical sportsman who is only a sportsman, 
bold and frank and free and generous, with no in- 
tricacies of character, impulsive and capable of 
magnanimity, the very opposite of the prudent, dex- 
terous, nimble man of affairs, rather reckless indeed 
and hot-blooded and passionate. His virtues are al- 
ready, we see, dangerously near to being vices. Be- 
ing largely a creature of impulse, he was in a crisis 
the mere plaything of animal passion, ready to sat- 
isfy his desire without thought of consequences. 
Without self-control, without spiritual insight, with- 
out capacity even to know what spiritual issues 
were, judging things by immediate profit and ma- 
terial advantage, there was not in him depth of 



124 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



nature out of which a really noble character could be 
cut. This damning lack of self-control comes out 
in the passage of our text, the transaction of the 
birthright. Coming from the hunt hungry and 
faint, he finds Jacob cooking porridge of lentils and 
asks for it. The sting of ungovernable appetite 
makes him feel as if he would die if he did not get 
it. Jacob takes advantage of his brother's appetite 
and offers to barter his dish of pottage for Esau's 
birthright. 

There would be some superstition in the minds of 
both of them as to the value of the birthright. Both 
of them valued it as a vague advantage, carrying 
with it a religious worth, but it meant nothing 
tangible; and here was Esau's temptation, terribly 
strong to a man of his fibre. He was hungry, and 
before his fierce desire for the food actually before 
him such a thing as a prospective right of birth 
seemed an ethereal thing of no real value. If he 
thought of any spiritual privilege the birthright 
might be supposed to confer, it was only to dismiss 
the thought as not worth considering. Spiritual 
values had not a high place in his standard of things. 
He could not be unaware of the material advantages 
the possession of the birthright would one day mean. 
He must have known that it was something to be 



ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT 125 

recognised as the eldest son, with special rights of 
inheritance and precedence and authority after his 
father's death. These things were real enough to 
him, even though he might have no notion of a 
deeper meaning in being the heir of the promise. 
But in the grip of his appetite even these temporal 
advantages were too distant to weigh much. In the 
presence of immediate satisfaction the distant ap- 
peared shadowy and unreal and not worth sacrificing 
present enjoyment for. He feels he is going to die, 
as a man of his type is always sure he will die if he 
does not get what he wants when the passion is on 
him ; and supposing he does die, it will be poor con- 
solation that he did not barter this intangible and 
shadowy blessing of his birthright. " Behold I am 
at the point to die ; and what profit shall this birth- 
right do to me ? " 

The Bible writers speak of Esau always with a 
certain contempt, and with all our appreciation of 
his good natural qualities, his courage and frankness 
and good humour, we cannot help sharing in the con- 
tempt. The man who has no self-control, who is 
swept away by every passion of the moment, whose 
life is bounded by sense, who has no appreciation of 
the higher and larger things which call for self-con- 
trol, that man is after all only a superior sort of ani- 



126 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



mal, and not always so very superior at that. The 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls Esau " a 
profane person who for one morsel of meat sold his 
birthright." " Profane " means not blasphemous, 
but simply secular, a man who is not touched to finer 
issues, judging things by coarse earthly standards, 
without spiritual aspiration or insight, feeling every 
sting of flesh keenly, but with no sting of soul 
towards God. Bold and manly and generous and 
with many splendid constitutional virtues he may 
be, but the man himself lacks susceptibility to the 
highest motives of life. He is easily bent by every 
wind of impulse, and is open without defence to 
animal appetite. He is capable of despising the in- 
tangible blessing of such a thing as a birthright, even 
though he feel it to be a holy thing, because he can- 
not withstand present need. A profane, a secular 
person as Esau, is the judgment of the ISTew 
Testament. 

This scene where he surrendered his birthright did 
not settle the destiny of the two brothers — a compact 
like this could not stand good for ever, and in some 
magical way substitute Jacob for Esau in the line 
of God's great religious purpose. But this scene, 
though it did not settle their destiny in that sense, 
revealed their character, the one essential thing 



ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT 127 



which was necessary for the spiritual succession to 
Abraham; and Esau failed here in this test as he 
would fail anywhere. His question to reassure him- 
self, " What profit shall this birthright do to me ? " 
reveals the bent of his life and explains his failure. 
True self-control means willingness to resign the 
small for the sake of the great, the present for the 
sake of the future, the material for the sake of the 
spiritual, and that is what faith makes possible. Of 
course Esau did not think he was losing the great 
by grasping at the small. At the moment the birth- 
right, just because it was distant, appeared insig- 
nificant. He had no patience to wait, no faith to 
believe in the real value of anything that was not 
material, no self-restraint to keep him from instant 
surrender to the demand for present gratification. 

This is the power of all appeal to passion that it 
is present, with us now, to be had at once. It is 
clamant, imperious, insistent, demanding to be 
satiated with what is actually present. It has no 
use for a far-off good. It wants immediate profit. 
This is temptation, alluring to the eye, whispering 
in the ear, plucking by the elbow, offering satisfac- 
tion now. Here and now — not hereafter ; this thing, 
that red pottage there, — not an ethereal unsubstan- 
tial thing like a birthright. What is the good of it 



128 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



if we die? and we are like to die if we do not get 
this gratification the senses demand. In the infatua- 
tion of appetite all else seems small in comparison; 
the birthright is a poor thing compared to the red 
pottage. 

It is the distortion of vision which passion pro- 
duces, the exaggeration of the pre'sent which tempta- 
tion creates, making the small look like the great, 
and discrediting the value of the thing lost. The 
vivid lurid description in the Proverbs of the young 
man void of understanding snared in the street by 
the strange woman gives both these elements of the 
effect of passion, the weak surrender to impulse, and 
the distortion of vision which blinds to the real value 
of what is given up for the gratification — " He goeth 
straightway as an ox goeth to the slaughter, till a 
dart strike through his liver ; as a bird hasteth to the 
snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life." 

But it is not merely lack of self-control which 
Esau displays by the question of our text. It is also 
lack of appreciation of spiritual values. In a vague 
way he knew that the birthright meant a religious 
blessing, and in the grip of his temptation that looked 
to him as purely a sentiment, not to be seriously 
considered as on a par with a material advantage. 
The profane man, the secular man, may not be just a 



ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT 129 



creature of impulse, he may have his impulses in 
good control, but he has no place for what is unseen. 
He asks naturally, What shall it profit? Men who 
judge by the eye, by material returns only, who are 
frankly secular, think themselves great judges of 
profit, and they too would not make much of a birth- 
right if it meant only something sentimental as they 
would call it. The real and not the ideal, the actual 
and not the visionary, the thing seen and not the 
thing unseen — they would not hesitate more than 
Esau over the choice between the pottage and the 
birthright. They judge by substance, and do not 
understand about the faith which is the substance of 
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 

How easy it is for all of us to drift into the class 
of the profane, the secular, persons as Esau ; to have 
our spiritual sensibility blunted; to lose our appre- 
ciation of things unseen ; to be so taken up with the 
-means of living that we forget life itself and the 
things that alone give it security and dignity ! How 
easy, when soul wars with sense, to depreciate every- 
thing that is beyond sense, and let the whole moral 
tone be relaxed! There is much cause for the 
Apostle to warn us to " Look diligently lest there be 
among us any profane person as Esau who for one 
morsel of meat sold his birthright." 



130 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



We too can despise our birthright, by living far 
below our privileges, and far below our spiritual op- 
portunities. We have our birthright as sons of God, 
born to an inheritance as joint-heirs with Christ. 
We belong by essential nature not to the animal king- 
dom, but to the Kingdom of Heaven; and when we 
forget it and live only with reference to the things 
of sense and time, we are disinheriting ourselves as 
Esau did. The secular temptation strikes a weak 
spot in all of us, suggesting that the spiritual life, 
God's love and holiness, the Kingdom of Heaven and 
His righteousness, the life of faith and prayer and 
communion are dim and shadowy things, as in a land 
that is very far off. " What profit shall this birth- 
right do to me ? " 

What shall it profit? seems a sane and sensible 
question, to be considered in a businesslike fashion. 
It is the right question to ask, but it has a wider 
scope and another application. What profit the mess 
of pottage if I lose my birthright % What profit the 
momentary gratification of even imperious passion 
if we are resigning our true life, and losing the clear 
vision and the pure heart? What profit to make 
only provision for the flesh, if of the flesh we reap 
but corruption? What profit the easy self-in- 
dulgence, if we are bartering peace and love and 



ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT 131 



holiness and joy ? " What shall it profit a man if he 
shall gain the whole world [and not merely a con- 
temptible mess of pottage] and lose his own soul ? 99 
What profit if in the insistence of appetite men go 
like an ox to the slaughter, knowing not that it is for 
their life ? " Thus Esau despised his birthright." 



XII 



AN UNFINISHED LIFE 

/ said, 0 my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. 
— Psalm cii. 24. 

The inscription of this Psalm is unique. It is not 
like the other inscriptions of the Psalms, with refer- 
ence to musical instructions or to the supposed author 
or the historical circumstances of their composition. 
In this case it describes the inner subject of the 
Psalm, and makes a very beautiful heading, " A 
prayer of the afflicted when he is overwhelmed, and 
poureth out his complaint before the Lord." The 
afflictions are those of the nation and of the Psalm- 
ist himself, who added to his own sorrows the sorrow 
of his people. It seems to have been written towards 
the close of the exile in Babylon. The author has 
known sorrow and tears as one of the homeless 
people, and has shared all the misery that came upon 
Israel. The keenest pang is that the city of God 
sits like a widow with her hair in the dust. 

It is not possible to disentangle the elements of 
personal sorrow of which the Psalmist speaks from 

133 



AN UNFINISHED LIFE 



133 



this general sorrow which he has with all who loved 
Zion. The elegy moves with mournful strains as he 
describes the bitterness of his pain. He has eaten 
ashes like bread and mingled his drink with weeping. 
His days are shortened; his strength wasted, and 
death has crept up close to him, so that he is withered 
like grass. It seems to him so untimely, so prema- 
ture that he should be taken; for he is assured that 
God is about to remember Zion and have mercy upon 
her. He feels that the deliverance is at hand. God 
will hear the groaning of the prisoner and regard the 
prayer of the destitute. The time is near when 
those who take pleasure in the stones of Zion and 
love her very dust will have glorious opportunity for 
rejoicing. 

For himself, however, his strength is ebbing out as 
the expected consummation approaches; and there 
breaks from him the pathetic cry, " O my God, take 
me not away in the midst of my days." To have 
gone through all the pain and tribulation without 
tasting the ultimate joy, to have borne all the toil 
and the burden without sharing in the harvest and 
in the joy of the harvest-home, to have taken part in 
the long and weary strife and to fall in the hour 
of victory ; that eyes which had seen all the desolation 
and been salt with tears through many a sorrow 



134 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



should be closed in death as the new era breaks 
— that is the dreadful pathos of the situation. It is 
untimely thus to be balked of the true fruitage of 
life, to be prematurely cut short ere he has truly 
lived out his days. We can enter with sympathy 
into the pitiful prayer, " O my God, take me not 
away in the midst of my days." He feels his life is 
unfinished. The winter has come before there has 
been any autumn. He has sown in tears but not for 
him to reap in joy. 

We, too, have often a similar feeling about what 
we call unfinished lives and untimely deaths. We 
have this sense of pathos not for the victor of a hun- 
dred fights, but for the soldier who falls in his first 
campaign; not for the statesman who passes away 
laden with years and honours, but for the promising 
novice who was just earning his first laurels; not 
for the man who can say after a strenuous and long 
life, " I have fought a good fight ; I have finished 
the course." Pity to him is an insult. He has lived 
out his life, and done his work, and entered into his 
rest. It may be hard for those who loved such a man 
and leant on him for wisdom and direction, but for 
himself it is a blessed and expected end. We do not 
feel this pity at the passing away of the old in the 
fulness of time, rich with the spoils of life, a golden 



AN UNFINISHED LIFE 135 



shock of sheaves for the great harvest-home. The 
real pathos is the untimely death when the hail-storm 
cuts the grain unripe and robs it of a harvest, the 
premature disaster, the unfinished life where the tale 
has not been fully told hut broken off abruptly in the 
middle. There is little or nothing to show for it all, 
for the years of preparation, for the training and 
the planning and the first trial of the practice of life. 
We feel there has been miscarriage somewhere, a 
great waste of power. He has been taken away, we 
feel as the Psalmist felt, not at the end, the natural 
and destined end, but in the midst of his days, not 
in the autumn of life but the springtime or the 
early summer. This tragedy is common enough — 
the eager brain stilled ere it has done its thinking; 
the tuneful heart stopped ere it had uttered its 
melody ; the busy hands lying quiet ere they had done 
their work; the keen eyes closed ere they saw the 
fruit of all their labour. 

We are oppressed with the thought of the irony 
of human life and of the vanity of human wishes at 
the sight of all unfinished work, the manuscript 
with the sentence broken off where the pen fell from 
the fingers, the picture with here and there a 
figure only sketched in charcoal, the statue with 
only suggestions of the beauty that was designed by 



136 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



it. We sometimes come across buildings in ruins, 
but not ruins in the ordinary sense ; for the buildings 
have never been finished, a monument sometimes of 
the folly of men, sometimes of their lack of fore- 
thought: — like the man in our Lord's parable who be- 
gan to build a tower without first of all counting the 
cost The great undertaking to cut a canal through 
the Isthmus of Panama cost many millions of pounds 
and cost many human lives, and then was left, with 
valuable plant rusting away, and the cut filling in, 
and the fine harbour silting up. Since the days of the 
tower of Babel there have been many enterprises of 
man begun and never completed; and most of them 
suggest some thought of sadness. 

But unfinished work can never be half so sad as 
unfinished lives. For one thing, a man is not judged 
by the one work he may have left unfinished. Dick- 
ens died with his last manuscript, The Mystery of 
Edwin Drood, incomplete ; but there is the long roll 
of his great works to sustain and explain his fame. 
Michael Angelo left unfinished work, as indeed most 
artists have done, but we do not think of these when 
we estimate his work. Even De Lesseps, who made 
such a colossal failure of the Panama Canal, left the 
evidence of his engineering skill in his previous 
work of the Suez Canal. We pass by the 



AN UNFINISHED LIFE 



137 



unfinished work to consider the work actually ac- 
complished. But an unfinished life has no such 
other reference to offer. It stands in all its naked 
incompleteness, a seeming failure with no complete 
meaning. It is a crop blighted before the harvest. 
The Psalmist's cry, when he felt that his life was 
unfinished and his death would be premature, was a 
natural cry of anguish, " O my God, take me not 
away in the midst of my days." 

The pathos of unfinished lives, and how common 
they are! We do not need to go to literature for 
illustrations, though they abound there, with a deep 
sense of the mystery of the providence, as witness 
Tennyson's In Memoriam of his friend Arthur Hal- 
lam, and Milton's Lycidas, " Young Lycidas, dead 
ere his prime " — the great mystery which has been 
so often felt that the bud should become no flower 
or the flower wither before the time of fruit, while 
the faded leaf will sometimes hang on the tree of 
life long past the time of its fall. Untimely we call 
it, as something opposed to the fit and proper, some- 
thing unnatural. We feel it to be natural rather 
that a man should sing out all the melody that is in 
him, and think out all his thought and work out all 
his activity; that he should at the end fall on sleep 
having served his generation, and not be taken away 



138 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



in the midst of his broken days ; that he should sing 
his own swan-song at the last, as Tennyson did of 
himself many years after he wrote of Arthur 
Hallam, 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me! 

And may there be no moaning of the bar 

When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 

When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home. 

This is the meaning of the old petition that God may 
deliver us from sudden death, not because it is sud- 
den ; for that in itself may be a great and crowning 
mercy. It is a prayer to be delivered from a death 
that is untimely, premature, unprepared for; saved 
from the fate of an unfinished life, taken away in the 
midst of our days. 

But in all this natural train of thought we are 
liable to fall into a great and grievous error. We 
may have a wrong standard of judgment as to what 
is a finished life. We mostly think of it as length of 
days, the telling of a long tale. Bulk and size are our 
common measure in this as in most things. A long 
life may be an unfinished life, though it has run out 
to the last sand undisturbed. It may be unfinished 



AN UNFINISHED LIFE 



139 



in all the essentials of true life, without having 
secured or attained or even once touched man's chief 
end. It may never have grasped for one moment 
the real purpose of living, so that to all intents it is 
cut off in the midst of its days, though the days were 
as the days of Methuselah. Life is more than mere 
existence. It may stretch out far beyond the three- 
score years and ten, but that too is vanity, unless 
there be more in it than mere length of days. A long 
life may be an unfinished one in all that makes for 
real living. Whereas, a short life may be finished in 
every best sense. Remember, that our Lord, who 
said at the end, "It is finished," with a depth of 
meaning that could be applied to no other human 
life, died a young man. That itself is a lesson and 
a warning to us when we speak of an untimely death 
and a premature end. Life may be long, sloping 
slowly to its natural ending, reaching its full fruition 
in our eyes, and at last passing to a soft and easy 
departure like gentle sleep, and yet be after all un- 
finished. Extent of life empty of moral sig- 
nificance is nothing and less than nothing. And on 
the other hand can we not enter with some sympathy 
into the new measure of time which made a Psalmist 
declare, " A day in Thy courts is better than a 
thousand ! " 



140 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



Human life cannot be judged by its years nor even 
by its works, but must be judged by its spirit. ~Not 
the palpable and outside, such as the years passed or 
the deeds accomplished, but what is attained through 
the time and through the deeds, the true set of the 
character, the bent of the life, the discipline of the 
heart, the culture of the soul. Sir Thomas Browne 
in a letter to a friend about a young man who will- 
ingly left the world at an age when most men think 
they may best enjoy it, makes in his own fine way 
the distinction we are seeking to bring out as to a 
truly finished and an unfinished life. " He that 
early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age is 
happily old without the uncomfortable attendants 
of it; and 'tis superfluous to live unto grey hairs 
when in a precocious temper we anticipate the vir- 
tues of them. In brief he cannot be accounted young 
who outliveth the old man. He that hath early ar- 
rived unto the measure of a perfect stature in Christ, 
hath already fulfilled the prime and longest inten- 
tion of his being : and one day lived after the perfect 
rule of piety is to be preferred before sinning im- 
mortality." 

Early or late, young or old, that is a finished life 
when the true end of life is apprehended. Truly he 
cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old 



AN UNFINISHED LIFE 



141 



man in him. If a man has learned to love God and 
obey Him, if he has submitted his will to the will of 
God, if he has linked his life to the Eternal Life and 
his love to the Eternal Love, his life is not unfin- 
ished, though it seem taken away in the midst of his 
days. There can be nothing untimely, when his 
times are in God's hands. Nothing can happen too 
early or too late. The Psalmist felt this; for im- 
mediately after his cry, " O my God, take me not away 
in the midst of my days," in the next breath he ex- 
claims, " Thy years are throughout all generations." 
The thought of God's eternity settles and strengthens 
him, with the assurance that the Eternal God is his 
refuge from the frailness and vanity of human life. 

That life is finished which knows the love of God, 
and is ready any day for the angel's Harvest-home. 
But life out of God, what is it at the best, at the last, 
but incomplete, unfinished, open at every point to the 
doom of decay and death, like stubble that blackens 
on the sodden earth ? The end of such life without 
spiritual contents, without God, is always untimely, 
always premature. With our unloving hearts and 
our unfinished lives well may we pray, O our God, 
take us not away till we have found our true life: 
take us not away in the midst of our days. 



XIII 



THE LOVE OF PRAISE 

They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. 
— St. John xii. 43. 

" He came unto His own, and His own received 
Him not." That is a broad statement of the result 
of Christ's work, in spite of the fact that He was 
enthroned in the hearts of some and received their 
boundless devotion till death. But when we speak of 
the failure of Christ's work, we have to do so with 
many limitations. It could be no failure when He 
found such passionate response. The hearts of some 
leapt in a moment to their eyes in glad recognition. 
Everywhere He made a great impression on men. 
An enthusiasm that could be called national more 
than once swept over the country. At times His 
name was in every one's mouth; and if His claims 
had been less and His objects more material and 
political, He would never have wanted for followers. 
His aims seemed to many to be too impalpable, too 
unearthly, too far apart from the things of the world, 
to induce them to throw in their lot with them. 

142 



THE LOVE OF PRAISE 143 



This was especially the case with the upper, ruling 
classes, who by temperament and training were ever 
inclined to sit long on the fence about any new 
movement, and who liked to make sure of the ground 
before they ventured down on the other side. Among 
them there was a great deal of half-faith, very akin 
to doubt. They were accustomed to balance ad- 
vantages, and could hold feeling in check till they 
could examine the pros and cons. This was only 
human nature as we know it. It was easy for poor 
Galilean fishermen to let sentiment carry them away 
without too carefully examining the possible risks. 
They had not much to lose at the worst; and above 
all they had not the same difficulty socially. They 
ran little risk of damaging their reputation and their 
credit among men. We know what a power for re- 
straint the feeling of society is, and the higher in the 
scale the more terrorism it seems to have. A fear 
of ridicule, of loss of esteem, the fear to be set 
down as a fool, the fear of being singular, all that 
has great weight with a man in forming his opinions 
and in shaping his conduct. The fear of social 
ostracism is a great deterrent in the face of new 
decisions appealing to be made. A man who has 
been in the habit of determining his life by the ex- 
ternal conscience of his set cannot break away from 



144 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



the custom of a lifetime. The man who has not been 
in the habit of settling questions by his sense of duty, 
by the spiritual appeal they make to him, can- 
not all of a sudden without great effort begin to 
do it. 

St. John tells us that many of the rulers really 
believed on Christ in their hearts, but were kept back 
by some such fear. " Because of the Pharisees they 
did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of 
the synagogue." To be shunned as a social leper, to 
be excommunicated as a religious heretic, to incur 
the shame of offending the unwritten but strong 
rules of their caste — only those who can enter with 
sympathy into such a case can understand the ter- 
rible temptation to be silent and just acquiesce in the 
verdict of the majority. They naturally feared to 
lose the good opinion of their fellows, to forfeit the 
praise of men. It was not so much the fear of actual 
persecution, as the loss of credit and prestige and 
that general estimation which men rightly prize so 
much. A ruler of the Jews risked much who threw 
in his lot with the despised Teacher of Nazareth. 
Some of them felt the attraction of Christ's appeal, 
and were moved to forsake all to follow Him; the 
beauty of holiness touched them with desire; they 
lingered wistfully over the thought of it; they half 



THE LOVE OF PRAISE 



145 



believed, were almost persuaded to bend to the sweet 
fascination; the narrow horizon of their petty life 
seemed to lift and beckon them on to explore its 
wonders beyond; but as they hesitated and feared, 
down came the narrowing walls of their spiritual 
prison, and confined them in the old bondage. The 
vision of Christ's larger life faded before the world- 
liness and the false standards of their hearts. 
Thoughts about reputation, respectability, and all the 
cramping ideas of their little circle, froze the gen- 
erous impulse, and killed the growing faith as the 
rain kills the kindling beacon. " How can ye be- 
lieve," Christ had asked them on another occasion, 
"ye, who receive honour one of another, and seek 
not the honour that cometh from the only God ? " 
True faith could not live in such a stifling atmosphere 
where high thoughts were forbidden. Ambition 
choked faith. They were too fond of glory from 
men, and looked upon the praise of men as the high- 
est reward; and so were blinded to the heavenly 
glory of Christ's life. They sought the esteem of 
men and could not imagine that God's approval 
could balance the loss of it. They sought other 
sources of honour than that of following truth wher- 
ever it led them through good or evil report, satisfied 
to be blessed with a conscience void of offence. Their 



146 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



condemnation is that they loved the praise of men 
more than the praise of God. 

The praise of men within certain limits is legiti- 
mate, though it may be a dangerous motive. Chil- 
dren are taught what they should follow by praise 
and blame. Even for older people than children to 
seek to do what will be pleasing to some one we 
reverence and love may be a very high motive for 
good. To do praiseworthy things, things that de- 
serve to be commended is quite a recognisable motive 
in life. The esteem and regard, which we give to 
beneficent and noble lives, are some of the best prizes 
of society. The greatest of our public servants get 
no other reward. To be praised in your work by one 
who knows what good work is; to have a word of 
commendation and encouragement in an art from a 
master of the art — that is worth striving for, and 
may be, and often is, an inspiration to better work 
still. If it ends in vainglory and laziness it is evil ; 
but that is only an evidence that the object of it is 
weak. I am not so sure but that as much work is 
ruined by cruel criticism as by a generous estimate, 
and as many young people are spoiled by discourage- 
ment as by judicious praise. Envy and detraction 
and jealousy are too common inmates of men's hearts 
to make us hard on the gentle company of encourag- 



THE LOVE OF PRAISE 



147 



ers. There is too much captious criticism that we 
can afford to lose the cheerful, hopeful elements. 
The encouragers of the best sort distribute their kind 
words not through the insincerity of flattery, but 
through their fine gift of sympathy. Their friend 
never did better work than he is doing now, they 
honestly think and say: their intimates were never 
more worthy of esteem : their minister never preached 
a better sermon than his last. There may be a little 
of the blindness of love in their judgments, but we 
need some love to sweeten the acrid bitterness of life. 
Not that it is good for any body of men to be a 
mutual admiration society, living an enfeebling life 
of flattery and praise. Still we must see from all 
the reasons given that, up to a certain point, it is 
quite a legitimate aim to seek to please others, hon- 
ourably, and honestly, and sincerely. 

If this is so, why should the condemnation of 
these rulers be merely that they loved the praise of 
men, and why should all who know anything of the 
deeps of the human heart and who know anything 
of the spiritual life fight against this as the enemy 
of their souls and warn others against it as a deadly 
danger % " Whoso knoweth himself well/' says 
Thomas a Kempis, " groweth more mean in his own 
conceit and delighteth not in the praises of men." 



148 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



Augustine devotes two trenchant chapters of his Con- 
fessions to this snare of praise. " Our daily furnace 
is the tongue of men/' he groans; for he confesses 
how his heart loveth praise. He feels how hard the 
subject is; for he knows that to have the influence 
for good he desires it is necessary to be loved of men ; 
and he knows that a really good life deserves to be 
praised, and often is praised, and that it would be 
absurd for a man to live ill in order to avoid the 
temptation of being praised. 

The explanation of any problem that may be con- 
tained in this seeming contradiction is to be found in 
the region of motive. If praise be a legitimate re- 
ward to seek, the question which settles everything 
is whose praise is it you desire, and value, and would 
like to have ; and is it for the sake of the praise f Is 
it to feed self-conceit ? The vain man is a glutton of 
praise. He can take it of any quality: it may be 
of the grossest sort if only it minister to self-esteem. 
He will fish for it as keenly as ever angler cast for 
salmon. And he will take it from any quarter. One 
of the many satires, touched with genial kindly wis- 
dom, of the great satire of Don Quixote, is the 
scene where Don -Lorenzo, the would-be poet, reads 
his poems to the poor crazed knight. Don Quixote 
thinks him the best poet in the world, and says he 



THE LOVE OF PRAISE 



149 



deserves to be crowned with laurel. " I need not 
tell you/' says the author, who knew human nature 
so profoundly, " that Don Lorenzo was mightily 
pleased to hear Don Quixote praise him, though he 
believed him to be mad ; so bewitching and welcome 
a thing is adulation, even from those we at other 
times despise." It is a keen satire, and true to life. 
Vanity will gulp down with eager relish the most 
fulsome praise. It does not even ask whether it is 
worthy of it, and does not ask whether the source 
of it is such that a truly self-respecting man can 
drink of it. The praise of the bad is worse than the 
blame of the good. The praise of some men is al- 
most an insult, and is enough to make one question 
whether his conduct is really worthy. " They that 
forsake the law praise the wicked," is one of the 
sharp thrusts of the Book of Proverbs. Many a man's 
character is damned by the praise he gets. To get 
the goodwill of the unthinking, all that is needed is 
a pliable conscience and a weak will. Only the col- 
ourless character can escape without some enmity. 

This is the terrible temptation of the love of 
praise, that it tends to make a man invertebrate, turn- 
ing towards the easy part. The insatiable desire to 
be acknowledged, to have your work recognised, to 
have your self-esteem flattered, has an evil effect on 



150 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



the whole standard of action. We readily become 
what will receive praise, what will be accepted, and 
what will sound well in the mouths of men. It is as 
debilitating mentally and spiritually, as dram-drink- 
ing physically. The constant danger is that we make 
others our conscience, and ask not what is right, what 
is well-pleasing to God, what is consistent with recti- 
tude, but what others will say of us. We judge 
ourselves not by a rigid standard of right, but by 
the flexible one of fleeting opinion. The weak char- 
acter cannot stand alone ; cannot live out of the sun- 
shine ; and withers before the east wind of criticism. 

For true living we need a higher standard than the 
praise of men. To serve God a man must be ready, 
if need be, to do without the sweet savour of popular 
acclaim. It is the demagogue, to whom applause is 
the breath of his nostrils. Here, too, we must learn 
from our Master, who was unmoved by the plaudits 
of the mob. He knew what value to put on them. 
Steadfastly He pursued His course of good, and did 
not alter His determination to go on with His work, 
though He knew that the shouts of Hosannah would 
change to the hoarse cries of rage and hate. Some of 
this independence of praise or blame, this aloofness 
of temper, enabling a man to stand firm, is needed in 
every strong character. All really great men have 



THE LOVE OF PRAISE 



151 



had it. To keep a conscience void of offence to God 
and to men, a man must be willing to dispense with 
praise, must be willing to suffer, must have some of 
the stuff of the martyrs in him, like St. Stephen, 

Who heeded not reviling tones, 

Nor sold his heart to idle moans, 

Tho' cursed and scorned, and bruised with stones; 

But looking upward, full of grace. 

He prayed, and from a happy place 

God's glory smote him in the face. 

This is the secret of true independence — the 
praise of God, not the praise of men. If we stopped 
to ask not what men thought of us but what God 
thinks of us, we would be saved from weak com- 
placency on the one hand, and from bitter loveless 
pride on the other. For, this independence of which 
we speak, is not a proud consciousness of right, a 
self-centred faith which enables a man to dispense 
with outside help and resent outside interference. 
Such an attitude hardens a man, and makes him 
contemptuous. It is not the self-centred life which 
is the true life ; but the God-centred life, which turns 
to God as the flower turns to the light. The weak- 
ness of these rulers was that men were more real to 
them than God; and naturally they yielded to the 
strongest influence. But if your heart is fixed on 
God, if to please Him and do His will is the bent of 



152 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



your life ; though all the world condemn, it is enough 
that He commends: though it is hard to do without 
the encouragement of our brethren, it is harder still 
to do without the smile of our heavenly Father; 
however desolate it is to stand alone, with Him they 
that be with us are more than they that be against 
us : like our blessed Lord, however misunderstood on 
earth it is enough to be understood in heaven : how- 
ever reviled by men it is enough to be praised by 
God. He hides us in the secret of His presence from 
the pride of man ; He keeps us secretly in a pavilion 
from the strife of tongues. 



XIV 



THE SHAME OF DETECTION 

As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of 
Israel ashamed. — Jeremiah ii. 26. 

The prophet is accusing the nation of apostasy, of 
unfaithfulness to her true Spouse. To awaken re- 
pentance he points to the base ingratitude which 
could forget the early days of their history when 
God espoused them, in love and favour brought 
them up out of the land of Egypt, led them through 
the wilderness, and brought them into a plentiful 
country. He points next to the wilful and wicked 
obstinacy which made them forsake God and choose 
the lower worship and the lower moral practice of 
heathenism. And here he points to the folly of it. 
Besides its ingratitude and its wickedness, it is also 
unspeakably foolish, an insensate stupidity at which 
the heavens might well be astonished, not only that 
a nation should change its God, who had taken them 
by the arms and in endless love and pity taught them 
to walk, but that it should change Him for such 
other gods — that Israel should have given Jehovah 

153 



154 THE GIFT OP INFLUENCE 



such pitiful rivals. This is the folly at which the 
heavens may be amazed, that my people " have for- 
saken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed 
them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no 
water." To a monotheist who had grasped the prin- 
ciple of the One God, and who had experience of 
spiritual communion, polytheism with its lords 
many and gods many, must have seemed a system 
almost beneath contempt. Intellectually it intro- 
duced confusion instead of order: morally it meant 
that life would be lived on a much lower plane : re- 
ligiously it was the degradation of the pure spiritual 
worship to which the prophets pointed the people. 

This is why the prophets always speak of the 
shame of idolatry. It seemed incredible that men 
in their senses should prefer what appeared to them 
to be brutish superstition. Both intellectually and 
morally it was a disgrace. Especially the prophets 
of the exile and after it, who had come into close 
connection with heathen idolatry, had this sense of 
superiority, and withered the stupidity of polytheism 
with their most mordant irony. It was shame, at 
which they blushed, to think of Jews descending to 
such puerile worship and practices. It was folly for 
the heathen who knew no better: it was shame for 
Israelites to grovel before a stock or stone. The 



SHAME OF DETECTION 155 



prophets confidently predicted that experience would 
prove the folly and vanity of idolatry. " They shall 
be turned back/' says the prophet of the exile, " they 
shall be greatly ashamed that trust in graven images, 
that say to the molten images, Ye are our gods." 
The prophets with their spiritual insight already 
saw the disgrace and vanity of such worship ; but the 
people, who were seduced by the lower and more 
sensuous rites of idolatry, would have to learn their 
folly by bitter experience. When the pinch came, 
when the needs of life drove them like sheep, when 
in the face of the great necessities, they would find 
out how futile had been their faith. " As the thief 
is ashamed when he is found out, so the house of 
Israel will be ashamed; they, their kings, their 
princes, and their priests and their prophets, saying 
to a stock, Thou art my father ; and to a stone, Thou 
hast brought me forth; but in the time of their 
trouble they will say, Arise and save us. But where 
are thy gods that thou hast made thee? Let them 
arise if they can save thee in the time of thy 
trouble." 

Ah, in the time of trouble they would find out 
their folly; and the vanity of their trust in idols 
would be found out. They should feel already the 
disgrace; but, though they are insensible to that 



156 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



now, they will yet be convicted and the hot blush of 
shame will cover them with confusion of face. They 
are not ashamed of the ingratitude and wickedness 
and folly of their conduct, but their sin will find 
them out, and then surely the conviction of their fool- 
ishness and guilt will abash them, and then at last 
they will know the sense of degradation and self- 
contempt which should be theirs now. " As the 
thief is ashamed when he is found out, so the house 
of Israel will be ashamed." 

The same dulness of mind and darkening of 
heart and obtuseness of conscience can be paralleled 
among ourselves. Is it not true that in social ethics 
the unpardonable sin is to be found out ? In many 
cases it is not the thing itself that men fear and con- 
demn and are ashamed of, but anything like ex- 
posure of it. There is a keen enough sensibility to 
disgrace, but not for the thing itself which is the dis- 
grace. Men will do things with an easy conscience 
for which they would be ashamed — if they were 
found out. Our moral standard of judgment is to a 
great extent only that of the community. Our con- 
science is largely a social conscience merely, not in- 
dividual and personal and vital, but imposed on us by 
society, a code of manners and rules which we must 
not transgress. It is no exaggeration to say that we 



SHAME OF DETECTION 157 



live more by this code, by the customs and restraints 
of society, than by the holy law of God as a light to 
our feet and a lamp to our path. Much of this is 
good, and represents the accumulated gains of the 
past, a certain standard of living below which men 
are not expected to fall, a moral and even a Chris- 
tian atmosphere which affects us all and which is 
responsible for much of the good that is in us. One 
only needs to live for a little in a Pagan community 
to realise how much we owe to the general Christian 
standard of our country, such as it is. At the same 
time we must see how insecure this is as a guard and 
guide to life. 

For one thing, it is bound to be largely an ex- 
ternal thing. Society can only take account of what 
is evident, what is on the outside. It cannot consider 
motives much or even character, and can only con- 
sider actual events that obtrude themselves into 
notice. It has its standard of respectability and of 
decency and even of morals, but that standard is 
bound to be external. A man might have a corrupt 
heart and be filled with all evil passions, but it stands 
to reason that society cannot take him to task for that, 
unless it gets something on which it can lay a finger. 

Apart even from such deeper moral depths of 
character, there may be actual transgressions, but 



) 



158 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



until they are discovered and proved, society must 
treat them as if they did not exist, A man might 
be a thief, not only in desire and heart, but in 
reality, but until he is found out he rubs shoulders 
with honest men everywhere as one of themselves. 
Society is not ashamed of him, and he need not be 
ashamed of himself. A man may break all the com- 
mandments, even the social commandments every- 
where recognised, but if there is no exposure noth- 
ing outward happens. So that the constant tempta- 
tion of us all and of society generally is to lay the 
stress on the outside aspect. Men dread the open 
exposure of an evil, not the thing itself; they dread 
the scandal, not the sin; the outward disgrace, not 
the inward dishonour. According to our necessary 
social ethics the thief need not be ashamed until he 
is found out, and unless he is found out. 

The subtle temptation of the whole attitude is 
that we are ever inclined to conform merely to an ex- 
ternal set of rules and not to an inward moral or 
spiritual standard. The first and chief of the social 
rules becomes not to create a scandal, not to be found 
out; and so long as there is no fama clamosa, no 
fierce exposure, we can be anything and do anything 
and live at peace with ourselves and with society. If 
punishment comes from the transgression of any 



SHAME OF DETECTION 



159 



moral or social law, the culprit smarts not for 
the sin, but for the punishment. He is ashamed at 
last and at first when he is found out. There is 
nothing necessarily of evangelical repentance in it, 
nothing healing in the sorrow or the shame, no vir- 
tue in the tears. William Seeker makes the distinc- 
tion in quaint fashion, " Pharaoh more lamented the 
hard strokes that were upon him than the hard heart 
that was within him. Esau mourned not because he 
sold his birthright which was his sin, but because he 
lost the blessing which was his punishment. This is 
like weeping with an onion ; the eye sheds tears be- 
cause it smarts." It is a proof that we are only liv- 
ing by the most superficial of moral rules when we 
are more concerned about the punishment than the 
sin, more concerned about public exposure than 
about the evil itself. To be ashamed only when 
found out means a somnolent conscience and an ex- 
ternal standard of conduct. 

But what a common state this is ! What types of 
false shame regulate our life, like that of the unjust 
steward who was ashamed to dig, but not ashamed 
to steal! We need a deeper standard of ethics, a 
more sensitive conscience, which would make us 
ashamed of the dishonesty or falsehood or moral 
cowardice or impurity, not because they happen to 



160 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



be brought home to us from the outside, not because 
we are detected by others, but because we have 
fallen from our own high standard, and have 
wronged our own true selves, and broken the high 
and holy law of God written on our own hearts. Till 
this is so, we are not safe, and have no reliable code 
of conduct. 

The shame of being found out may, of course, 
induce this better feeling, and be the beginning of a 
nobler and more stable moral life. It is one of the 
blessed functions of punishment to offer us this 
point of departure, as the house of Israel through the 
shame of idolatry reached a loathing of it that ulti- 
mately made it impossible in Israel. Welcome the 
retribution which brings us self-knowledge : welcome 
the detection which makes us ashamed and makes us 
distrust ourselves at last: welcome the punishment 
which gives repentance of sin : welcome the exposure 
which finds us out because it makes us at last find out 
ourselves! All true knowledge is self-knowledge. 
All true exposure is self -exposure. The true judg- 
ment is self -judgment. The true condemnation is 
when a man captures and tries and condemns him- 
self. Keal repentance means shame, the shame of 
self that he should have permitted himself to fall so 
far below himself, and have dimmed the radiance of 



SHAME OF DETECTION 



161 



his own soul. Long after others have forgiven, it 
may still be hard for a man to forgive himself. Long 
after others have forgotten, he may still remember. 
To this sensitive soul, to this vitalised conscience 
there may be even wounds hidden to all sight but 
his own sight—and God's. As the thief is ashamed 
when he is caught, the house of Israel is ashamed, at 
last not because of the mere exposure, but because of 
the ingratitude and wickedness and folly that made 
an exposure possible and necessary. We need to 
have the law written on our hearts, to conform to 
that and not to a set of outward social rules : we need 
to walk not by the consent of men, but by the will of 
God : we need to see the beauty of Christ's holiness, 
and then our sin will find us out though no mortal 
man has found it out. 

" As the thief is ashamed when he is found out, 
so the house of Israel will be ashamed." Shall be — 
must be I We are only playing with the facts and 
forces of moral life if we imagine it can be other- 
wise. Real and ultimate escape from this self-ex- 
posure is impossible. There is no secrecy in all the 
world. " Murder will out " is the old saying, or old 
superstition if you will. The blood cries from the 
ground. It will out in some form or other, though 
not always by the ordinary detective's art. Eetribu- 



162 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



tion is a fact of life, whether it comes as moralists 
and artists of all ages have depicted or not. Moral 
life writes itself indelibly on nerves and tissues, col- 
ours the blood. It records itself on character. Any 
day may be the judgment-day, the day of revealing, 
declaring patently what is and what has been. The 
geologist by a casual cut in the earth can tell the 
story of the earth's happenings by the strata that are 
laid bare, deposit on deposit. The story of our life 
is not a tale that is told and then done with. It 
leaves its mark on the soul. It only needs true self- 
knowledge to let us see it all. It only needs awak- 
ened memory to bring it all back. It only needs the 
fierce light to beat on it to show it up as it was and is. 
" There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed 
and hid that shall not be made known. Therefore, 
whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard 
in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the 
ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the house- 
tops." Ashamed when he is found out! If to be 
undetected is the only defence, it is to gamble against 
a certainty. Found out we shall be, as we stand 
naked in the revealing and self -revealing light. 

The recognition of this is the great ethical awak- 
ening to a man, teaching him to submit to self-judg- 
ment and compelling him to live his life in the open. 



XV 



A NARROWING LIFE 

For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself 
on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap him- 
self in it. — Isaiah xxviii. 20. 

This chapter is one of the most powerful of the 
prophecies of Isaiah, characteristic of his mag- 
nificent literary qualities, and characteristic of the 
man himself, with his keen mind and nohle heart. 
It has the knowledge of life, the insight into human 
nature which made him a great statesman, and the 
insight into God's will which made him a great 
prophet. It is full of dialectic skill, argument and 
sarcasm and epigram; and full of passion, with the 
line and plummet of judgment and righteousness in 
it, and swept by an indignant storm of hail that 
sweeps away the refuge of lies. It begins with a 
reference to the northern kingdom of Israel, and the 
fate in store for their luxury and self-indulgence, the 
drunkards of Ephraim, who have forfeited their 
rights to exist as a separate nation. Judgment yawns 
for them, as the first-ripe fig of summer, which a 

163 



164 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



man looks on, and while it is yet in his hand he eat- 
eth it up. 

Then coming nearer home, he accuses Judah of the 
same sin, the same luxury ; and for them too will be 
the same judgment unless they repent. The reference 
to Ephraim is meant to drive the lesson home to 
J udah. The great Assyrian power which will swallow 
up Ephraim like a ripe fig, will be used to be to them 
also the scourge of God. With incredible levity, 
they only mock at him, and ask if he thinks them 
children ; and act up to the name which Isaiah hurls 
at them, "ye scornful men, that rule this people 
which is in Jerusalem." Their argument is that 
they are not so simple, so childish, as he seems to 
think when he presumes to counsel them. They 
are clever skilful statesmen, and have bargained 
against all the possible chances of disaster. While 
he has been preaching, they have been planning and 
plotting. They have their alliance with Assyria, 
and have concocted a counter-alliance with Egypt, 
and mean to play off one against the other. They 
are clever rulers, and have provided for all the 
chances. " We have made a covenant with death, 
and with hell are we at agreement; when the over- 
flowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come 
unto us." That is to say, they have now concluded 



A NARROWING LIFE 165 



their treaties by which they need no longer be afraid 
of disaster. The statesmen at Jerusalem were miser- 
able opportunists, with no fixed principles, no con- 
sistent policy, dreaming that they can make up for 
the weakness at home by moves and counter-moves on 
the political chessboard. They put their trust on 
secret alliances and underhand intrigues. 

Over against this Isaiah places the true policy, \s 
which accepts the facts of the situation, the present 
overpowering strength of Assyria, and which be- 
lieves in the future of Israel, and therefore devotes 
all energies quietly to strengthening the life of the 
nation. Let them put away the sin and luxury and 
drunkenness which are eating out the heart of the 
people; and let them put away their trivial diplo- 
matic schemes and opportunist intrigues. Let them 
rely upon God. Let them think upon justice and 
righteousness and obedience to the moral laws of 
life. They will save themselves from the fever of 
intrigue and from the ruin which inevitably must re- 
sult from their policy. He presents to them instead 
the calm policy of faith, faith in God's purpose with 
them, if only they will be true. " He that belie veth 
shall not make haste." 

In support of this argument, Isaiah uses the pro- 
verbial expression of our text to suggest the futility 



166 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



of their political schemes to bring peace. Their op- 
portunism is not sufficient : it will fail to satisfy the 
needs of the situation. " The bed is shorter than 
that a man can stretch himself on it: and the cover- 
ing narrower than that he can wrap himself in it." 
The proverb carries a suggestion of the very opposite * 
of peace — discomfort, unrest, ever hampered and con- 
fined ; a distorted, cramped, fretful life. As opposed 
to the faith which brings calmness and peace of 
heart, their lack of faith, seen in the sinful indul- 
gence at home and the foolish diplomacy abroad, is a 
totally inadequate support for men or nations. 
There can never be true peace on the terms dreamed 
of by the scornful men who ruled this people in 
Jerusalem. Peace is not got by making covenants 
with death and agreements with hell. There can 
never be peace to men who make lies their refuge, 
and who hide themselves under falsehood. He that 
believeth shall not make haste. He that believeth 
alone can know peace. The other way is the way of 
unrest, and alarm, and fever, and constant dispeace. 
" The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch 
himself on it." 

It is still true, as in these old days, that the lackf 
of faith means the narrowing of life. Without faith 
there is no sufficient support for life. Without faith 



A NARROWING LIFE 



167 



there is no chance of peace. It is still the true 
policy; all else are but painful makeshifts, leaving 
life cramped and fevered and bare, stretched on a 
narrow rack. Faith alone provides a sphere large 
enough for our powers and our needs. The logic of 
events proved Isaiah to be right when he assured 
Judah of this. And it is true to-day, as in Isaiah's 
time, that the only safe national policy must be based 
on religion. If the desire to do justly and love 
mercy and walk humbly before God has died out of 
our heart as a people, if we are concerned only about 
our dignity or our trade, then we shall lose both our 
dignity and our trade. If the passion for pleasure 
rules our life in our cities, if we work only for gain, 
and seek gain only for luxury and self-indulgence, 
then our crown of pride, like that of the drunkard of 
Ephraim, shall be trodden under foot. When the 
eye of a people grows dim, and sees no visions of 
truth and right, then the sceptre falls from the 
nerveless hand. 

If we think to stay the plague at the heart by 
skilful diplomacy, and the tricks of the political 
trade, tricks as old and as threadbare as the days of 
these scornful men that ruled in Jerusalem, it is but 
a bolstering up a rotten substance, and a breath of 
God's North Wind will crumble it to dust. To every 



168 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



building of state that man builds, the line of judg- 
ment and plummet of righteousness must be laid; 
and his work must be tried by the storm of hail that 
sweeps away the refuge of lies. It may not be 
to-day, nor to-morrow : it may be slow of coming, but 
it is none the less sure. There is no permanence, no 
stability, no real prosperity, no true peace for a 
people except in sincerity of faith and righteousness 
of life. Have we no cause to take home the 
Prophet's message to ourselves, when we know that 
the dreadful picture of the drunkards of Ephraim is 
a true picture of much that goes on in our midst, 
when the lust for gold and the quest for pleasure are 
such imperious motives among ourselves? Authori- 
ties lament to us the weedy specimens of manhood 
bred in our cities, and make all sort of peddling sug- 
gestions, many of them good enough in their own 
small way. The physique is more dependent on the 
morale than most of us are willing to admit. We 
need something more than mere palliatives. The 
cause must be adequate to the effect desired. We 
need to go deep to the roots of the evils of our 
civilization. 

Ultimately, nothing but a truer religion, a stronger 
faith in God, a more resolute determination to do His 
will, can bring new life and strength to a nation. 



A NARROWING LIFE 



169 



" The people that know their God shall be strong 
and do exploits." Sinful self-indulgence impairs the 
judgment, distorts the vision, as well as weakens 
the bodily powers. Isaiah who saw this knew that 
the only hope for J udah lay in turning to God. He, 
the Lord of Hosts, is for a spirit of judgment to him 
that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them 
that turn the battle at the gates. And no diplomatic 
moves, no devices of government, no schemes of al- 
liances affect the essential features of the problem. 
Is France inherently stronger because of the alliance 
with Russia? Isaiah knew that the alliance with 
Assyria and the secret intrigues with Egypt, instead 
of really strengthening Judah, only weakened her, 
and made her trust to a bruised reed. It was an 
uneasy bed on which Judah lay, with no prospect of 
true peace, too short for a man to stretch himself on, 
and covering too narrow to wrap himself in. A pain- 
ful makeshift, instead of the policy of faith, based on 
moral principles, bringing strength, and courage, and 
self-reliant, because God-reliant, hope. 

In our individual life also we find the narrowing 
of life through lack of faith. Religion does not # 
mean the weakening and impoverishment of life. 
Rather it brings an expansion of powers, and broad- 
ening of opportunities. Religion enlarges, because it 



170 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



inspires. It widens the horizon, and opens up life, 
and leads a man out to a large place. The end which 
i faith sets before itself is not a broken, wounded life, 
but fulness of life, true life for the first time, life 
so large and full that it can be called even here 
eternal life. We are deceived about this because we 
look so much on the externals. We see religion mak- 
ing a man give up this and that, curtail here and 
there, sometimes even cut off a right hand and pluck 
out a right eye, that we are inclined to think that re- 
ligion means shrinkage, the attenuation of life. But 
faith can dispense with much of the outward in life, 
just because it enriches the inward. It deepens and 
enlarges the real life, and brings ever the joy of ex- 
pansion. To be open on the side of God, to be re- 
sponsive to spiritual influences, is to have unclosed 
to ourselves a larger and ever larger world of thought 
and feeling and aspiration. " What was a speck ex- 
pands into a star." 

Historically, Christ's faith brought this expansion 
to the world. It lifted the life of man forward with 
a great impulse. To the most degraded of men it 
* brought undreamt of possibilities. It ennobled life 
\fco souls in the narrowest surroundings. It made a 
slave a free spiritual being, leading him out in spite 
of his serfdom into a large place. It changed the 



A NARROWING LIFE 



171 



face of the world, revived the outworn pagan life, 
making all things new. It is so still to every man 
who opens his heart to God. The narrow lot of man 
is broadened by God; and in such communion there 
is always the potency of continual expansion. Faith 
introduces a new motive power, which alters the 
standpoint of life, which changes the current of life. 
In spite of all appearances of curtailment, this en- 
largement is a fact of experience, as all who have 
bent to the strait gate know. Our faith comes as a 
great motive power, driving the life to large ends. 
The consciousness of God changes the world to a 
man. The knowledge of a personal love brings 
strength. The Christian faith touches the heart 
with love, and so gives the life a new buoyancy, and 
an exultant sense of victory. Duty is ennobled by 
the new spirit in which it is faced. The things done 
may be just the petty details of living, or even be 
irksome in themselves, but they are glorified by be- 
ing done for love. St. Paul could say, not as a glow- 
ing piece of rhetoric, but a plain fact of life, " I can 
do all things through Christ that strengthened me." 
And faith brings peace, because it satisfies the heart 
of man. When a man knows the love of God, he 
feels that it was for this he was born. His spiritual 
being has at last an adequate support. The old un- 



172 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



rest and sense of failure pass away; for the soul 
comes into its kingdom. 

But to live without faith, with no contact with the 
spiritual world, with no communion with heavenly 
things, is to have life hopelessly narrowed. It shuts 
in the natural powers, and dwarfs the spirit. There 
are only the two ways of it — to build your life on a 
k material basis, or on a spiritual. We have seen how 
Uhe spiritual gives an inspiring motive, and a calm 
assurance. To try to fill the insatiable heart of man 
with the things of sense alone is to try to fill a sieve 
with water. If no provision is made for the 
spiritual, it can only be a poor narrow, wizened life, 
even in the fattest of fat valleys. Woe to the crown 
of pride which has no other ground of assurance than 
that of the drunkards of Ephraim. 
/ All earthly satisfaction must be from its very na- 
rture but as a fading flower. And the peace of which 
the prophet speaks is a peace that the world cannot 
^give, as it is a peace that the world cannot take 
away. If we are shutting our hearts to God, and 
quenching His spirit, and rejecting His Christ, if we 
are building on the shifting sand of time and sense, 
if we have no communion with the eternal, no 
prayer, no life of the spirit, if with all our getting 
we get nothing but what is material and temporal, we 



A NARROWING LIFE 



173 



are in penury and distress, and are robbing our- 
selves of our only hope of peace. Be it what it may, 
with satiated desire, gratified ambition, intellectual 
attainment, it is a cramped and narrow life, with al- 
ready the gnawing of the worm in it. Man is of 
bigger mould than any materialist view of life can 
match. It does not give you scope for your true and 
full powers. There cannot be even a semblance of 
peace except by atrophy of soul. Any form of 
materialism, gild it never so cunningly, brings man 
to a sphere too small for him. You are built ona-* 
larger plan, and the fever of unrest, the pain of a 
cramped life, must consume the heart which is not 
fixed on God. The bed is shorter than that a man 
can stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower 
than that he can wrap himself in it. 

And each will have one anguish — his own soul, 
Which perishes of cold. 



XVI 



A FALSE STANDARD 

But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have 
they dealt treacherously with me. — Hosea vi. 7. 

With the possible exception of Jeremiah, there is 
no prophecy which shows such a personal note as 
Hosea's, a note of tenderness which pleads tirelessly 
for God. He was a man of fine sensitiveness of na- 
ture, which was the source of his keenest pangs. He 
lived at the time when the northern country of Israel, 
which he loved so passionately, was drifting to its 
doom through the folly of rulers and the sin of all 
the people. As a preacher of righteousness he makes 
the strong indictment demanded by the facts, laying 
bare the terrible evils of the time: the gross super- 
stition which passed for religion, the consequent cor- 
ruption of life, the social crimes which were sapping 
the moral foundations of the nation, perjury, mur- 
der, theft, adultery. But it is not as a mere moralist 
that the denunciation is made, as if he were content 
to prove intellectually the inevitable connection be- 

174 



A FALSE STANDARD 



175 



tween the moral disorder and the political decay of 
the nation. It is a burden on his heart almost too 
heavy to bear. He could not have borne it but for 
the revelation he had of the forgiving love of God. 
God led him to a wide vision of his redemptive pur- 
pose, and gave him the key to the pain of his own 
life and to the mystery of providence in the sad his- 
tory of Israel. There is a melting, moving tone in 
all his pleading, and ever and anon a cry of anguish 
breaks out in spite of his self-mastery; for while the 
vision of God's love brings him comfort, it also adds 
a sting to the thought that the people of God should 
wantonly trample upon that love. Yet that is his 
only hope, the thing that kept him from despair, 
namely, that above the sacredness of law there is the 
sacredness of love, above the eternal righteousness 
of God there is His eternal love. So that in the 
strongest appeal to conscience there ever is felt the 
appeal to the heart, as in the beautiful lyric of re- 
pentance which precedes our text, " Come, let us 
return unto the Lord : for He hath torn and He will 
heal us; He hath smitten and He will bind us up. 
. . . He shall come unto us as the rain, as the lat- 
ter rain that watereth the earth." 

But Hosea was not privileged to see a true re- 
sponse to his appeal. There was not moral depth 



176 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



enough in their hearts for them to have anything but 
a facile and evanescent repentance, born of emotion 
and withered at the first temptation as the fleeting 
mist is withered by the rising sun. " O Ephraim, 
what shall I do unto thee ? for your goodness is as a 
morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away." 
They disappointed all the prophet's loving and wist- 
ful expectation for them; and belied their own 
providential history as a nation; and betrayed the 
gracious covenant which God had made with them. 
They were no better than the very heathen round 
about them, no better than others who had not 
had their privileges and opportunities. Instead of 
loving and obeying and serving God, they lived 
as if they had never stood in a special relation 
towards Him. " They like men have transgressed 
the covenant." 

In the Old Testament the idea of covenant colours 
the whole history. Pious Jews, looking back, inter- 
preted the past of their race by this great thought. 
They were the children of the promise and the prom- 
ise was the gracious relationship into which God en- 
tered with the people of Israel. From what has been 
said of Hosea's prophecies, we can see that it did not 
mean any legal agreement, a formal bargain; and 
still less could it give ground for arrogance and pre- 



A FALSE STANDARD 



177 



sumption. To him it was a figure of speech by which 
he expressed his interpretation of the spiritual his- 
tory of Israel, stating the terms of love in which God 
stood towards them, and on the other side the moral 
obligations that lay upon them in view of that 
gracious attitude. Israel's privilege meant Israel's 
duty. The covenant was broken when they ceased 
to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with 
God. They put themselves out of that sweet rela- 
tionship, wilfully robbed themselves of the prom- 
ise, when they did not perform their part of the 
loving contract. They took the rank and place 
of other men. " They like men trangressed the 
covenant." 

Thus these words are more than an assertion of 
universal human fallibility, more than saying that it 
is human to err, like men to transgress. It is the 
assertion of a higher standard for Israel. Israel had 
special privileges, peculiar opportunities, and was 
charged with a mission. To fail, to be after all only 
like other men, was to come under heavier con- 
demnation. They should not be like men, like the 
rest of the world. It is no excuse to them that they 
are just like others. If they are not better than 
others, they are worse ; for they have sinned against 
clearer light, and sinned against special love. Their 



178 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



degradation is deeper far than even that of the 
heathen. To ordinary sin they have added the sin 
of apostasy. It is treachery against the gracious God, 
an insult thrown in the very face of Love. " Like 
men they have transgressed the covenant: they have 
dealt treacherously against me." 

The principle of this greater condemnation is a 
common one, and works out in every relationship of 
life. Every step of progress sets a new standard; 
and men are judged not hy what they have passed on 
the way, but by what they have attained. The 
Christian conscience of our time and country is our 
standard, not the pagan conscience of a past time or 
of a heathen land. Every advance is a fresh obliga- 
tion. New knowledge is new duty. New light is 
new responsibility. A privilege is also a penalty. 
Israel cannot be as the heathen, cannot be like other 
men, without greater sin than even theirs ; for Israel 
has had clearer knowledge and higher privilege. 
The law is invariable, and reasonable. " To him 
that hath is given." To him that finishes a task is 
set a new burden. The more you do, the more you 
get to do. The higher you rise, the higher rises the 
standard of judgment. Do you complain ? Nay, it 
is the reward of efficiency. In business the capable 
man is not laid on the shelf as a reward for his 



A FALSE STANDARD 



179 



capacity. He is promoted, advanced to harder and 
more responsible positions. It is the practice of 
life; and we recognise the principle in every 
sphere. 

There is, however, a constant tendency to level 
down the standard, and to be content with just what 
is expected by the mass. It was against this tendency 
that the prophets ever had to strive. Israel was al- 
ways tempted to give up being a peculiar people in 
this sense of having special moral responsibility. 
Every gain, physical and moral, is held by effort, by 
continual conflict with that from which it rises. The 
lower form of worship and the lower type of life of 
the nations round about them had many attractions. 
The surrounding influence was like an all-embracing 
atmosphere from which they could not shake them- 
selves. The higher religion with its sterner, simpler 
rites, with its great moral claims on life, was ever 
menaced by the surrounding idolatries with their ap- 
peal to sense, and their laxer standard. There was 
always a heathen party in Israel, even in her most 
faithful days, a party ever ready to take ad- 
vantage of every weakening of the religious con- 
science and ever making a strong appeal to the 
lower instincts of the nation. Why should they alone 
attempt the impossible ? Why should they be bound 



180 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



to a covenant so severe ? Why not be like the men 
of the place, like the men around them, who get on 
very well and have a happier time where less is ex- 
pected of them ? The strongest count in Hosea's in- 
dictment against them, that " they like men trans- 
gressed the covenant," was also the strongest 
temptation. 

It is the common temptation still to accommodate 
oneself to environment. We excuse ourselves that 
we are just like men when we transgress the cove- 
nant, the covenant which our own hearts acknowledge. 
We are only doing as others; and we are no worse 
than others if we are no better. We know the weak 
spot in our defence where this temptation finds us 
and draws blood. We know from sad experience 
how easy it is to slip down to lower levels and con- 
tent ourselves with the attainments and the conduct 
expected by society. And we do not need to look far 
for encouragement. The men who will sneer at you 
for being a " saint " will admire you for being what 
they call a man of the world. You will get plenty 
of help in being like others, and plenty of hindrance 
in attempting the exceptional or uncommon. It 
needs a staunch heart and a consecrated will to re- 
sist the worldly influences to be as the men of the 
place. Count Zinzendorf, when sent to make the 



A FALSE STANDARD 



181 



grand tour to finish his education, wrote before he 
set out, " If the object of my being sent to France 
is to make me a man of the world, I declare that this 
is money thrown away ; for God will in His goodness 
preserve in me the desire to live only for Jesus 
Christ.' ' His friends did not want him to be unlike 
men, in the absorbing passion for Christ he had 
even as a boy, which afterwards produced the great 
missionary zeal of the Moravian Church. They 
would rather he had gone to Paris, and did as others 
did, and come back to be like his set, as we say. It is 
of a piece with the other worldly wisdom that we 
should do at Rome as the Romans do, which has of 
course a surface truth, but which has often served 
an evil purpose. To accommodate oneself to environ- 
ment in thought and conduct, to do at Rome as 
Romans do, to adopt the common tone, only careful 
to avoid singularity, means in practice the choice of 
the lower part Evil is none the less evil, though we 
follow a multitude to do it. The covenant is trans- 
gressed, and the penalty of transgression is ours, 
though it be like men to transgress. There can be 
little moral backbone in a character without a certain 
independence, forming judgments and making de- 
cisions and regulating life according to conscience 
and not according to outside opinion. A man may; 



182 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



succeed in being like men without any initiative of 
his own and without any development of his own 
character. 

In addition to this outside pressure of a low 
worldly standard, another subtle encouragement to 
reduce the level of conduct is due to a disillusion- 
ment which comes regarding others, sometimes in 
men we have admired and looked up to. We find 
out their limitations, and are often disappointed in 
them. We find they are like men, hampered by the 
same weakness, liable to the same temptations, over- 
taken by the same faults. We take a low estimate of 
human nature, and bring down our own standard of 
duty to suit it. Men are all alike, we say in our 
mood of pessimism, and I may as well be like them : 
Why should I be different? Why strive to attain 
the unattainable? You know the temptation, and 
you know how and where it touches yourself, the 
temptation to say in some form or other, I do not 
pretend to be better than my neighbours; I do not 
set myself up as on a higher platform. Perhaps it is 
in some business point about which you once had 
searchings of heart, some doubtful practice which 
you now condone as merely the custom of the trade. 
Or it may be some social evil which you join in and 
call the ways of your set, the habits of your circle, 



A FALSE STANDARD 



183 



and it would be puritanic of you to object. You are 
only doing what others do. 

On such reasoning there could be no progress at 
all. There would be no stainless peaks on earth; 
only a dreary level. This is true in every region of 
man's activity. On the same principle why should a 
man seek truth and pursue it earnestly? Why 
should he ever oppose the prejudices of the crowd in 
science or philosophy, in art or literature ? Can he 
not content himself with the knowledge and attain- 
ments that are common, and be like men ? 

So in the moral world we could argue a defence 
of anything by finding companions, sink we as low 
as we might. There is no devilish practice, no foul 
habit, no cruel selfishness, which might not be con- 
doned. We could excuse " the vilest things beneath 
the moon " to which " for poor ease sake we give 
away our heart." We have not come to our kingdom 
as men till we have got past the merely social 
conscience, the outside standard of others, and have 
within ourselves a measure of right and wrong, and 
are parties to a personal covenant in which we stand 
to God. Only this spiritual fellowship will save a 
man from the spirit of the world around, which eats 
like an acid into his highest ideals. 

In practice it comes to be simply this as the prac- 



184 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



tical rule of life, that we who have stood in the 
new covenant through Christ are called not to do and 
be like men, but to do and be like Jesus the Son of 
Man, who has given us an Example that we should 
follow in His steps. He henceforth represents man 
to us as well as God. Whatever dishonours Him dis- 
honours our own soul. Whatever is unworthy of 
Him is unworthy of us. Whatever is unlike Him 
in mind and spirit is also unlike our own true selves. 
His very presence in our sinful world is an eternal 
protest against the low creed which would disinherit 
us from our divine portion, which would link us to 
all beneath us and break the links with all above us. 
To see the beauty of His holiness; to see Him full 
of grace and truth, and behold the glory of the Son 
of Man, is to know once for all our true place in the 
universe of God, and to know that we are called to 
walk worthy of our great vocation. 

Kot in presumption, as if we had attained or 
were already perfect, and may idly sun ourselves 
in the divine favour. The more we are thrilled with 
the passion of God's love, the less likely are we to 
forget that we are " like men," in their weakness 
and need. We will feel that in every temptation we 
need the reinforcement of God. We are never with- 
out need of His pity and love. Like very children 



A FALSE STANDARD 



185 



we need a Father's hand over rough places. We are 
never without need of forgiveness. " Like men we 
have transgressed the covenant " all the more basely 
because it is a covenant of grace. 

!Nay, unlike men, unlike what men should be and 
do. " So ignorant was I, I was as a beast before 
Thee." Like silly sheep who stray in stupid wanton- 
ness, " All we like sheep have gone astray." And 
ever we move to the music of Hosea's sweet lyric of 
repentance, " Come let us return to the Lord our God. 
He shall come unto us as the rain that watereth the 
earth." 



XVII 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 

Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ's Gos- 
pel and a door was opened unto me of the Lord, I had no 
rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother. — 2 

COBINTHIANS ii. 13. 

I desire to speak of an aspect of St. Paul's life and 
character not often noticed, his friendships, his re- 
lation to those who were in the inner circle of his 
associates. This does not lie on the surface either of 
the record of his deeds or on the surface of his let- 
ters, hut has to he gathered little by little from stray 
remarks and casual incidents. That this should be 
so is to he expected from the nature of the materials 
at our disposal, which are the Acts of the Apostles 
dealing with the amazing spread of the Church as a 
record of events, and the Epistles, which as a rule 
were not personal letters hut addressed to a com- 
munity and dealing therefore with general subjects 
interesting to the Church at large. At the same time 
a man of Paul's temperament could not escape from 
giving us evidences of his depth of feeling for in- 

186 



FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 187 



dividuals ; and so we find him revealed in his letters, 
as we would never have known him from his ac- 
complished works. If we were confined to the record 
of the Acts for knowledge of his personality we would 
have gathered much from what he was enabled to do, 
his tireless energy, his magnificent success in build- 
ing up the Church of Christ. Here and there we 
would have had a glimpse into his heart through one 
or other of his speeches, such as the affecting address 
to the elders of Ephesus, when he had to tell them he 
was going to Jerusalem not knowing the things that 
would befall him there. We would see his mingled 
courage and fine sensibility and deep and tender af- 
fection for the men with whom he had laboured. We 
only need to read that speech with sympathy to un- 
derstand why at its close they all wept sore, and fell 
on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all 
for the words which he spake that they should see his 
face no more. But we could not get much insight 
into the deep world of feeling within the man merely 
from the history of all his labours and journeys, re- 
lated largely as they had to be from the outside. 

In his letters, however, though they were not per- 
sonal letters in our sense of the word, ever and again 
there is a rift and we see into his heart. If we read 
with care and sympathy we gradually piece together 



188 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



features that let us see in some completeness the 
human character of the writer. At present I do not 
speak of the many qualities which are so traced — 
the strength and delicacy of feeling, the fearless in- 
dependence of mind, the unselfishness, the passion of 
zeal, the great grasp of intellect, and such like, for 
which one could find many illustrations. Our sub- 
ject rather is the need he shows for human inter- 
course and help, the relations in which he stood 
towards his intimate friends. 

This is somewhat different from his relations with 
the different Churches he founded, the group of 
converts he made at every step in his great mission- 
ary journeys. In a sense the two subjects are alike 
at least in this that Paul always gave more to others 
than he ever needed to receive, which is the privi- 
lege of the strong and the gifted. Alike to his most 
intimate friends, and to the great mass of Christian 
converts the Apostle was as one who served, who 
stood as master and teacher and adviser and ruler. 
He was so easily first in his magnificent qualities of 
brain and heart and soul, that it seems absurd to 
speak of any mutual relation. All his converts were 
beloved friends towards whom he had the tenderest 
feelings, and his letters abound in instances of 
courtesy and sweet thoughtfulness and tender appeal 



FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 



189 



to affection. Read the Epistle to the Philippians, 
which is one of the noblest and sweetest love-letters 
ever written, full of loving reminiscences and affec- 
tionate touches, addressing them in endearing terms, 
" my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy 
and crown," and you will realise what a pastor's 
heart Paul had. In a very true sense he was the 
friend of all the Churches, and looked upon all who 
named the name of Jesus as his friends. 

But like other men he had human needs for the 
closer intimacies, the need for an intercourse nearer 
than even that close tie. And there is for us all a 
great and useful lesson in this. We can put a man 
like St. Paul so far from us in our contemplation of 
his virtues that he ceases to really influence us ex- 
cept as something to wonder at. We can think of him 
as so unapproachable, and look at his goodness as 
like the sunlight that strikes upon the stainless peaks, 
that his example has for us no real inspiration. This 
is a distinct danger when we realise what things there 
were in his life which divide him from his common- 
place brethren. His untiring energy, his greatness 
of soul, his superiority to the things that tempt other 
men, the loftiness of mind which raised him above 
jealousies and envyings, the unselfishness of life 
which makes us feel poor and mean beside him, all 



190 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



the phenomenal qualities that constituted his great- 
ness, all tend to isolate him from our level. He rises 
more than once almost above the high-water mark 
of human nature, as when he says with such fervid 
sincerity, " I could wish that myself were accursed 
from Christ for my brethren's sake." He seemed to 
forget that he was a man when, in the passion of a 
wondrous love, he counted all things for which other 
men strove as dross. He seemed above human frailty 
and human passion. God knows how small we men 
feel beside such a man, who had won his sainthood 
with blood. 

It is good for us, then, to note the common grounds 
of his life with ours, not that the idol has feet of clay 
as mean natures love to remark, but that he never 
posed as an idol at all, that he was human in his every 
need. It is good to note the times when Paul comes 
near us and opens his heart ; for it may be that the in- 
spiring thought may grip us with that quick intensity 
which cuts the breath that even we may in our meas- 
ure become like him. He hungered for the help and 
sympathy of his friends, and felt desolate and help- 
less when he was deprived of them. More than once 
he lets us see that he was cast down and needed to 
be comforted by the coming of a friend like Titus. 
Our text is a case in point. He had gone to Troas 



FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 191 



expecting to meet there a fellow-worker, and his dis- 
appointment made him almost powerless, " I had 
no rest in my spirit because I found not Titus my 
brother." It would need a sermon for each to trace 
the relationship in which Paul stood to Timothy, to 
Titus, to Luke the beloved physician, to Barnabas. 

There is this to be noticed first of all about all 
these friendships, that it was not merely a relation 
of master and disciples. It was that in many cases 
and added a new and sweet bond between them. But 
he also seemed to lean on them for sympathy and 
help, as for example Titus, of whom he says, " When 
we were come into Macedonia our flesh had no rest, 
but we were troubled on every side, nevertheless God, 
that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted 
us by the coming of Titus." Or again he writes to 
Timothy with a tone of pleading in the words, " Do 
thy diligence to come unto me shortly; for Demas 
hath forsaken me, having loved this present world; 
Crescens hath gone to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia, 
only Luke is with me. Take Mark and bring him 
with thee; for he is profitable to me for the min- 
istry." He was not afraid to let his comrades know 
how much he leant on them and prized their faith- 
fulness; he never tried to pose as self-contained as 
smaller men do. He was not afraid to let his friends 



192 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



know how he loved them, and never grudged praise 
to his associates. 

What a generous, large-hearted friend Paul was! 
He hardly ever mentions one of his fellow-workers 
without an endearing epithet, such as " My be- 
loved," or " our sister," or " our labourers in the 
Lord," or as with Timothy, " my dearly beloved 
son." No wonder he received such devoted love, 
and found men who would willingly have faced 
death for one look of commendation from him. 
Though he was one of the best-hated of men, he was 
also one of the best loved. Read the last chapter of 
Romans with its beautiful salutations, and you 
realise how Paul was blessed with friends. There is 
a chapter in every epithet, a chapter of his heart, 
as this one, " Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and 
his mother — and mine." What an unrecorded 
chapter these words hint at, when the mother of 
Rufus succoured the wandering Apostle, it may be 
nursed him in some sore sickness, so that she was to 
him ever after " the mother of Rufus — and my 
mother too." 

I wish I could go over in detail all these references 
scattered through Paul's letters which illustrate this 
aspect of his great character. We would be struck 
with their complete appreciation of the good qualities 



FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 



193 



of his friends, the generous gratitude he offered, the 
noble praise. Take just one other which also has a 
chapter of incident in it — when he speaks of Pris- 
cilla and her husband Aquila and calls them "my 
helpers in Christ Jesus, who have for my life laid 
down their own necks." As I went over the Epistles 
to note all the references, sometimes to nameless 
names embalmed in the New Testament by Paul's 
love, I did not know whether I was more affected by 
the humble, loyal, and faithful service of so many who 
are just names to us, or by the great-hearted Apostle 
who loved to speak of them in his generous pride of 
them. There have been many sermons preached 
about Paul's genius for statecraft, his genius for 
Church government, his genius for theology; but I 
do not remember ever hearing of a sermon on Paul's 
genius for friendship ; and yet is it not so ? It would 
be to telKhis noble life's story to adequately treat 
thi3 subject ; for all his work is associated with some 
evidence of friends. Think of his gratitude to Luke 
the beloved physician ; his tender care like a mother's 
for Timothy's health, the delicacy of his appeal to 
Philemon, whom he feels he might well have com- 
manded, "yet for love's sake I rather beseech you, 
being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a 
prisoner of Jesus Christ." 



194 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



Of course we know there must have been great 
personal magnetism in Paul which gave him easy 
hold of men, but all his friends were tried by fire 
afterwards, and though some failed him as Demas, 
and the ranks were thinned by the loss of all fair- 
weather friends, yet the tie that bound them was 
stronger far than any mere personal attraction. This 
has to be said about all Paul's friendships that they 
were conditioned by his work. They were not idle 
gossips and dilettante companions, who had some 
opinions and tastes in common. He for one had no 
time and no heart for the comradeship that meant 
nothing but a graceful adornment of life. His 
friends were all fellow-workers, all in sympathy with 
the great object for which he lived. Their relation- 
ship went down to bed-rock, and they could not be 
moved so long as each remained true. The first re- 
quisite for Paul was sympathy with the great work 
he had in hand. This seemed sometimes to make 
him a little hard and relentless, as when he refused 
to take Mark on the second missionary tour because 
he had turned back in the first journey and went not 
with them to the work. Paul with his eager im- 
petuous nature, unable to understand vacillation and 
almost contemptuous of weakness, would not lean any 
more on such a broken reed. He preferred to 



FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 195 



separate altogether from Barnabas rather than let 
the craven Mark come with them. But when the 
young man proved himself true and staunch, he seems 
to have won Paul's admiration and love. The warm- 
hearted Apostle from his references afterwards 
seems almost eager to make up to Mark for his 
former poor opinion of him. 

It was not exclusiveness which made Paul limit 
his comradeship to those who were like-minded. It 
was essential for the great work to which he bent 
every thought and energy. If a man had no interest 
in Christ, and in the extension of the Kingdom of 
God, he could be no fit friend for Paul. If a man 
turned back from the large venture for the world, as 
Demas did in the hour of trial, it was a stab to Paul's 
heart and to that love which lay deepest in Paul's 
heart. To him it would be as a treachery to his 
Lord, and friendship under these circumstances could 
only be a name. This is not due to any tone of hard- 
ness in Paul's mind, a narrowness which made him 
sacrifice any one who could not see eye to eye with 
him. For, after all, it is the one essential condition 
of all true friendship. 

The only permanent relationship among men is a 
spiritual one. It does not mean thinking alike, and 
being alike in temperament and capacity, but it must 



196 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



mean some community in the things of the soul. If 
men never plumb the deepest parts of their nature 
they cannot really know each other. ~No relationship 
founded on physical contiguity or on intellectual 
tastes can from the very nature of the case be lasting. 
There can be no permanent basis of deep agreement 
except in spiritual community. If another has no 
sympathy with us in our highest thoughts and noblest 
passions and holiest aspirations, it is only desecrating 
the fine word to speak of friendship. It may be 
partnership, or intercourse more or less pleasant, but 
it cannot be fellowship. If Paul goes on to his great 
service pouring out his noble heart for high ends, 
and Demas loves this present world, what can it be 
but separation ? The only permanent relationship is 
one of spiritual community : the only permanent sev- 
erance of hearts is lack of that community. Be not 
unequally yoked, is a solemn word. Unless men love 
the same love, and are in sympathy in the high things 
of the soul, it can only be a form of friendship deny- 
ing the power of it. 

For Demas or any other to have had the chance 
of friendship with Paul, and to have bartered it away 
for some poor pittance of worldly good, is a tragedy. 
Perhaps he did not realise of how much worth it was 
to gain a smile from Paul, until he lost the chance 



FRIENDSHIPS OF PAUL 



197 



of doing it. All that he would gain from his deser- 
tion, however much it brought him, was a poor ex- 
change for the days and nights with Paul, and the 
fellowship of the faith of Christ, and a share in the 
service of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was more 
than Paul's friendship that Demas lost 

If you want to have noble friends, you must be 
willing to be noble. If you want to be bound in ties 
stronger than the tie of blood, you must meet to- 
gether in the inner sanctuary, you must in the lar- 
gest sense of the word make your friends in Christ. 



XVIII 



THE REPROOF OF LIFE 

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the 
wise. — Pkovekbs xv. 31. 

The great subject of this Book of Proverbs is Wis- 
dom. The teaching of it, so varied, so seemingly dis- 
connected, can yet be summed up in that one word. 
Judged from one standpoint, the Book is not on the 
highest levels of the Bible, like the sublime poetry 
of a Psalmist or the passionate pleading of a 
prophet. But the Bible is for life, and life has 
many sides and many open doors. In many cases 
indeed, the wisdom inculcated here may almost be 
called worldly-wisdom, shrewd advice about the con- 
duct of life, sarcasm, caustic satire of the follies of 
men, astute counsel, sometimes genial, sometimes 
cynical, about the ways of cities. It deals largely 
with the wisdom of experience, observation, common 
sense, the intelligent understanding of the facts of 
life which we call mother-wit. There is an acute dis- 
cernment of human nature in its weakness as well 
as its strength, and such a profound sagacity in the 

1»8 



THE REPROOF OF LIFE 



199 



management of affairs, that the Book appeals to some 
minds as poetry and prophecy do not. And though 
the counsel is so often prudential, making its appeal 
to observation such as the man in the street can 
verify, there is everywhere a keen ethical insight, 
laying bare the moral facts of life on which indeed 
all life rests. 

It is natural in such a Book which makes wisdom 
its subject-matter, that much should be said about 
the way of receiving instruction. Life is a business 
which men have to get through if possible decently 
and well, and so they have to learn the proper ways 
of conducting the business. There is a training in it, 
a necessary education, things that must be found out 
somehow if failure is to be avoided. The young man 
especially who is beginning this business of life needs 
to be willing to learn, to listen humbly to warning 
and advice. Of course, life will teach its own les- 
sons by its own method of encouragement and pun- 
ishment, but the discipline in the school of life is 
very hard, making no allowance for ignorance or 
mistakes. It strikes hard when the time for striking 
comes, and it seems a pity that beginners should not 
be able to utilise the hard-won experience of the 
wisdom of the race. They might at least be so fore- 
armed as to be able to take advantage of the first 



200 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



indication of a lesson from the great school-master 
life. 

So, the teachable mind, the willing ear, the 
open tractable disposition, these are the first req- 
uisites for an apt pupil. Pride is the one unas- 
sailable stupidity. Pride is not looked on here as 
a deadly sin, but as an absolute bar to knowledge. It 
is the quality which marks the fool. This is ever 
the attitude of the Proverbs. " Seest thou a man 
wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a 
fool than of him." The chief reason the Book 
gives for this consistent attitude to pride and self- 
sufficiency is that pride makes it impossible for a man 
to learn wisdom. It deprives him of any advantage 
to be got from the experience of others : it even takes 
away any chance of learning from the experience of 
self. This is in line with a deeper spiritual note 
which is all through the Bible that humility is the 
door to everything, the way to life itself. The 
humble soul, ready to hear, willing to accept reproof, 
will learn the secret of God. Kepentance comes 
easy to humility, and repentance is the only method 
of forgiveness, and the only way to peace. To the 
humble alone are given the vision and the revelation : 
of such sweet, docile childlike souls is the Kingdom 
of Heaven. We can thus understand the stress laid 



THE REPROOF OF LIFE 201 



on this virtue in this Book and the despair with' 
which it speaks of the proud and haughty, and of 
their inevitable failure. It is failure all along the 
line. For even in the ordinary conduct of life pride 
makes it impossible for a man to profit by the counsel 
or criticism, or warning, or reproof of others. 
Whereas, on the other hand, the humble is open to 
learn and to become wise. 

Naturally, the sorest test of this disposition is 
found in the region of reproof : and so the Proverbs 
is full of counsel as to the right manner and the right 
spirit in which to receive rebuke. It is this which 
affords the dividing line. " A rebuke entereth deeper 
into one that hath understanding than a hundred 
stripes into a fool." " He is in the way of life that 
heedeth correction, but he that forsaketh reproof 
erreth." " Whoso loveth correction loveth knowl- 
edge, but he that hateth reproof is brutish." The 
one utterly hopeless folly is the folly that will not 
learn. The Book of Proverbs has many hard re- 
marks about the fool, but by far the most frequent of 
the references is to the fool whose weakness is shown 
in his ignorance and self-conceit. He is the man who 
will have his own way, who, if he would only listen 
to reason, would see that his own way was a wrong 
way, but to listen to reason is the last thing he will 



202 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



do. It is the temper that will not submit, that will 
not be trained and disciplined, that will not learn 
from reproof or counsel, so that the mind is a muddy 
mixture of ignorance and arrogance. That is the 
utter hopelessness of his case. " Though thou 
shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with 
a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." 
It is ingrained ; and when the inevitable consequences 
of his stupidity or vice fall upon his doomed head, 
he blames everybody and everything but himself. 
He puts it down to misfortune, to hard luck, to the 
lack of opportunity, to the evil of men, to the in- 
justice of God — to anything but to the right cause, 
his own wilful neglect of all the lessons with which 
the world is vocal. It is not the simple who is con- 
demned in the Proverbs, the witless, the scant of 
brain; it is the stubborn, the morally senseless who 
will go his own misguided way. And it is not the 
clever as such who are commended, but the humble 
who will listen to counsel and be warned against evil 
and learn to submit to the laws of all living, meekly 
accepting even reproof when merited. 

The evidence of this laudable temper is to be found 
not only in listening to advice, but most of all in the 
attitude towards life itself which such a man takes 
up. Life is looked on as a discipline, a training for 



THE REPROOF OF LIFE 203 

character, replete with experiences both joyful and 
sorrowful which can enrich the whole nature. The 
world is not a place to find pleasure in first of all, but 
to find wisdom. So, not happiness but duty becomes 
the chief motive of those who appreciate the true 
situation. All experiences are full of meaning with 
a purpose if only we will use them aright. They can 
and ought to develop in us a true and pure, and 
sweet and strong character. They are meant to 
teach us wisdom, the knowledge of the world, the 
knowledge of self, the knowledge of God. Life is 
the great educator. None can teach us lessons as 
life can, and encourage and reprove as life does. 
Thus the humble teachable man, whom this Book 
calls the wise man, is he who sees these moral and 
spiritual possibilities in ordinary providence and 
pays heed to them. " The ear that heareth the re- 
proof of life abideth among the wise." 

The reproof of life ! Life has that for all of us, 
the bursting of the bubble of youthful hopes, the 
rude awakening from the idle dream. Things indeed 
are not what they seemed. The world is a different 
place from what we once imagined, and our lives 
have run upon different lines from what we once 
fondly hoped. We have been chastened. We have 
been reproved. We have been pulled up against the 



204 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



inevitable. We have wounded our feet kicking 
against the pricks. It has taken some of us long to 
learn even the commonest facts of life, to say nothing 
of the inner facts and spiritual meaning of the whole. 
But it is something to be sure that we ought to 
have learned and that there is indeed something to 
learn. 

What is the reproof of life ? In keeping with the 
general shrewd wise teaching of this Book of Prov- 
erbs the reproof of life will mean, to begin with, the 
sane and sensible bearing towards the laws of health 
and life which experience teaches. We ourselves 
have a proverb which says that a man at forty will be 
either a fool or a physician, with the evident 
thought that by that time a man ought to have 
learned the simple elementary rules of health. We 
are inclined, however, to make too much of mere ex- 
perience, or rather we limit the idea of experience to 
mere length of living. We speak of experience as if 
it were everything, and as if years necessarily 
brought it, something which only came by a regula- 
tion method. It does not follow that length of days 
brings wisdom. It does not follow that to have come 
through many vicissitudes of fortune, to have had 
many experiences, will give the right temper in which 
to meet and learn the reproof of life. Experience 



THE REPROOF OF LIFE 



205 



teaches fools, we say. It ought to, but really it 
teaches everybody but fools. The important thing is 
not the number of the experiences. The impression- 
able heart can from one learn all. The stubborn 
heart will from all learn none. The important thing 
is not even the kind of experience, but the spirit in 
which it is met, the attitude taken up. 

If the proof of this deepest of all wisdom is that 
the heart should hearken to the reproof of life, then 
the lesson can come in countless ways, and it can be 
learned soon, if only the heart is bent to it. If the 
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, if to 
know God is essential to truly know life, then that 
disposes at once of the many devilish sayings ex- 
pressive of the devilish doctrine that wisdom con- 
sists of knowing evil in the sense of doing it. We 
speak of learning life, and seeing the world, and sow- 
ing wild oats as if that was the appointed way to 
life. It will only lead to a sorer, fiercer form of the 
reproof of life. " The road of excess leads to the 
palace of wisdom," is one of William Blake's 
aphorisms, with a certain truth in it, namely that so 
many only learn wisdom after the severe punish- 
ment that came from unwisdom. The road of ex- 
cess may sometimes lead to a palace of wisdom, but 
it is not the road to it, be assured by the testimony 



206 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



of all the saints, by the witness of all the wise. It is 
a wisdom which is too late. It is a joyless wisdom, 
the wisdom which comes when the heart is eaten 
out, when life has lost its beauty and grace, and the 
world which might have been, which ought to be, the 
scene of purity of thought and grace of speech and no- 
bility of deed turns to dust and ashes at the touch. 
Nay, my son, be wise, be admonished, learn the reproof 
of life on easier terms than that. " Wisdom crieth 
aloud in the street, she uttereth her voice in the 
broad places ; in the city she uttereth her words, How 
long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And 
scorners delight themselves in scorning? And fools 
hate knowledge ? Turn you at my reproof. Behold, 
I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known 
my words unto you." 

No man who would be wise need wait for the full 
reproof, which comes as a rod for the back of fools. 
Sooner, much sooner, is the time ripe for amend- 
ment than the heart is ripe. Easier comes the oppor- 
tunity, than comes the will to use the opportunity. 
Not at the first reproof of life, nor at the second, do 
our stubborn hearts bend to the lesson. Not at the 
first knock, nor at the second, do we open the door 
to the gracious visitor who stands and knocks. The 
ear might have heard the reproof of life and been 



THE REPROOF OF LIFE 



207 



counted among the wise long before it happened, even 
if it at length did happen. 

Ten years ago, five years ago, 

One year ago, 
Even then you had arrived in time, 

Though somewhat slow. 

Yes, and even then you might have arrived in wis- 
dom as you had arrived in time. It is not for want 
of opportunity, not for want of reproof, that you 
have let things slip, and are to-day like a knotless 
thread in the seam of life, with little or no meaning 
in your existence, with no relation to the divine wis- 
dom of the world, because no relation to God who 
made the world, with no relation to Christ, the wis- 
dom of God and the power of God. Is it for nothing 
that you have lived in this rich world with its les- 
sons and revelations, with its sanctities and sacra- 
ments ? If you have lived on the mere froth of ex- 
istence, with petty thoughts and petty desires, filled 
with stupid meaningless frivolity, with never a true 
conception of life with its menace of death, or of 
death with its lesson of life, what about the reproofs 
that have come to you once and again, the dealings 
of providence, the pleadings of grace, the strokes on 
the heart, the knocks at the door, the sorrow and dis- 
appointment and affliction, the mystery, the passion, 



208 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



the pathos, the tragedy, the reproof of life showered 
on your impenitent heart and your senseless mind? 
And what about the day of calamity that shall be, 
when your fear cometh, when the black terror that 
lurks for you somewhere in some corner of the road 
will at last grip you, when the last and final reproof 
comes, is it nothing that failure must be writ over it 
all, a life redeemed by no nobleness or sacrifice or 
love, saved by no deathless hope, sanctified by no 
hidden communion? The pity of it — the miserable 
folly and shame and mistake of it ! " The ear that 
heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise." 

Is this all the reproof of life? a pitiless conse- 
quence of cause and effect, a punishment of mistake 
when it is irretrievable, "judgment prepared for 
scorners and stripes for the backs of fools " ? Nay, 
to the hearing ear and the understanding heart the 
reproof of life, however hard it may have pressed, is 
more than the discipline of an inflexible law. It 
has a secret, which the humble enquiring ear hears to 
its sweet and lasting content. We know that it is not 
easy to accept reproof from another man, even when 
our conscience tells us it is merited. How we flare 
up when any one tries it! It needs a very humble 
tongue on the one hand, as well as a very humble ear 
on the other, to speak and to hear words of reproof. 



THE REPROOF OF LIFE 209 



There is usually a touch of the Pharisee in the tone 
of the reprover, if there is also a touch of irritation 
in the reproved. Now the secret of the text is this. 
It is easy to receive reproof, when we know that it is 
prompted and guided by love. If we were always 
sure that reproof was not for the personal triumph 
of the reprover, nor the fruit of vanity and self- 
righteousness, nor out of malice ; if we were sure it 
hurt the reprover as much if not more to rebuke be- 
cause he loved, we would submit humbly. 

Now, this is the secret in the larger affair of the 
reproof of life. When we realise that the reproof of 
life which comes to us in our sorrows and losses is 
the very evidence of love, and because our Father 
cares for us, and cares most of all for the best in us, 
we will bend to it and hearken. That is the ripe 
wisdom which comes to some — we see it sometimes 
in their faces with their serene brow and calm eyes 
and patient lips — the reproof which has been ac- 
cepted and taken to feed the soul. That is the ripe 
wisdom which this world can afford to those who are 
obedient to the will of God, the true knowledge of 
life which is knowledge of God, which looks upon life 
as Paul looked upon the Jewish law as a school- 
master to bring us to Christ. This is the secret of 
the reproof of life, to learn the secret of the Lord, 



210 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



to bend to the will of God, to see the touch of a piti- 
ful love in all the dealings of providence, to be calm 
at the heart amid all the ferments of the world, with 
an ear that hearkens for God, a heart that asks to 
know His will, a soul that cradles itself in the love of 
the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord ; the faith which 
brings peace, and will bring, if it be God's will, 

An old age serene and bright 
And calm as is a Lapland night. 



XIX 

THE COURAGE AND THE COWARDICE OF 

SIN 

His blood be on us and on our children. — Matthew xrvii. 25. 
Ye intend to bring this man's blood upon us. — Acts v. 28. 

How differently things look at different times ! In 
the heat of passion consequences look small and of 
little account, but when the blood has time to cool the 
whole matter takes on another aspect. Looking for- 
ward in eager desire to a coveted object, nothing can 
be allowed to stand in the way, nothing is worth con- 
sidering compared with the thing wanted ; but look- 
ing back on the attainment, we cannot imagine that 
we offered such a price for it. When the balance of 
judgment is shaken by passion any risk seems small, 
any consequence seems cheap, but afterwards we 
think we must have been besotted to make such a 
poor bargain. Passion gives a spurious courage 
which throws down the gauntlet with an air of 
bravado, to be succeeded by a cowardice all the more 
apparent after the high and vaunting words. There 
is a daring of sin which is not afraid to assume all the 

211 



212 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



responsibility if there is to be any, which is willing 
to accept any consequences. Who is afraid to pay 
the price, to reap the fruit of the deed ? " His blood 
be on us and on our children." But when the deed 
is done, men whimper if the consequences they de- 
rided come, and cannot believe that they should be 
expected to pay the price they foresaw. " Ye intend 
to bring this man's blood upon us " — a grieved com- 
plaint of injured men who refuse any sense of re- 
sponsibility. The courage and the cowardice of sin! 

In cold blood how differently this judicial murder 
of Jesus looked to all the actors in the tragedy! 
Pilate, whose blood had never been anything but cold, 
had washed his hands of it, saying, " I am innocent 
of the blood of this just person ; see ye to it." Judas, 
who betrayed his Lord, went back with the thirty 
pieces of silver in despair when the dark passion had 
left his heart. " See thou to it," the priests said to 
Judas. You did it, and that is your concern; you 
cannot cast the burden on us by throwing back the 
money. And now the rulers who engineered the ac- 
cusation say complainingly to the men who by their 
preaching were keeping green the memory of their 
victim, " Ye intend to bring this man's blood upon 
us." None can be brought to accept the responsibil- 
ity for this deed of shame. But the refusal did not 



COURAGE AND COWARDICE OF SIN 213 



alter any of the facts. Judas had to see to it : Pilate 
had to see to it: priests and people, themselves and 
their children, have had to see to it ever since. It did 
not need these formal words when the passion was on 
them to fix the responsibility. It was there, whether 
they owned to it or not. But the formal words are 
there too, giving point to the irony of history. 

You remember how the words came to be uttered. 
At the trial of Jesus, Pilate had no heat of passion 
to overturn his reason. He was cold and calculating 
all the time. He did not want to condemn an inno- 
cent man, but he did not want government to be 
troubled with a possible riot and did not want his 
own name to be implicated at Rome. He pacified 
the populace by assenting to the crime, and appeased 
his conscience by disowning it. It was an absurd and 
impossible thing, though it is a common enough de- 
vice. He cleared himself of the guilt by taking water 
and washing his hands before the multitude, as a sign 
that he acquitted himself and refused to contract any 
guilt in the matter. " I am innocent," he said, " of 
the blood of this just person; see ye to it." How 
readily we think that if we protest against a thing 
formally we absolve ourselves ! Pilate did not want 
to have his name associated with a riot at J erusalem ; 
and his name has been associated for ever with this 



214 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



judicial murder. Little did the proud Koman think 
that his name would go down to all the years, to all 
the world in infamy. To get what they wanted 
priests and people formally and solemnly consented 
to take the guilt on themselves. In the heat of pas- 
sion it was done, and in the cunning policy that pas- 
sion dictates even when it boils. It was done to tie 
Pilate down to their will. It was as much as to say, 
If it is only a qualm of conscience that troubles you, 
we will take the responsibility, our conscience is 
strong enough to relieve you of the guilt. In their 
fierce unrelenting madness of hate they utter the im- 
precation on themselves, regardless of any sort of con- 
sequence, " His blood be on us and on our children." 

Look on that picture, and now look on this. The 
deed was forgotten, buried, and life in the city went 
on as before, till the priests and rulers are annoyed 
by a little band of men keeping alive the name of 
this same Jesus whom they had crucified. Those re- 
sponsible for government are always and naturally con- 
tent with keeping things going smoothly, and do not 
want to be troubled with new doctrines. When it suited 
their own purpose the chief priests could create a 
disturbance better than any, but in normal times they 
want to avoid disturbance. So they set themselves 
by threats and imprisonment to choke off this new 



COURAGE AND COWARDICE OF SIN 215 



movement. In prison or out of it, however, Peter 
and the Apostles go on firmly and calmly, and the 
people are being won over. They are summoned be- 
fore the council, and this is the charge, " Did we not 
straitly command you that ye should not teach in 
this name ? " — this name which they thought they 
had disposed of, but which was reappearing like an 
accusing ghost. " Behold, ye have filled J erusalem 
with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's 
blood upon us." It was fear of the people that was 
at the bottom of this complaint. They were not 
thinking of the moral guilt before God of having 
done to death an innocent man, but of the possibility 
of vengeance at the hands of an inflamed populace 
who might be taught to think that they should right 
the wrong by vengeance. They do not want those 
things which they had quietly buried to be raked up 
again. They take it as an affront that blame should 
be laid at their door. Was not this man punished at 
the hands of Roman justice ? What had they to do 
with it ? They would now wash their hands of it all. 
Let Pilate or somebody else see to it. They feel they 
have just cause of complaint, " Ye intend to bring 
this man's blood upon us." Peter replied, " The 
God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew 
and hanged on a tree." His answer is a simple state- 



216 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



ment of fact, " We are witnesses of these things." 
Protestingrand asserting and denying will not affect 
facts. " Ye slew Him and hanged Him on a tree." 

The priests probably did not remember the words 
that had been used at the trial of J esus. The words 
had only been used as a move in the game with 
Pilate, and the present protestation had no reference 
to the previous words, but the two sayings give a 
dramatic turn to the situation, and bring out the deep 
truth we have suggested of the false courage and the 
weak cowardice of sin. In the heat and passion of 
the persecution of J esus they took on them with light 
hearts all the guilt, if there was any. They were not 
afraid to assume responsibility, but now they would 
creep out of their own contract, shuffle off any guilt 
in the matter and wash their hands of the whole con- 
cern. Have they not themselves to thank if the blood 
is brought upon them? Ye slew Him and hanged 
Him on a tree, says Peter relentlessly. Had they 
not said in their hate, " His blood be on us and on our 
children ? " But the daring has ebbed out of them, 
and they whimper out the charge, " Ye intend to 
bring this man's blood upon us." 

It is so with all forms of passion. In the fever of 
desire a man is willing to pay any price, to accept 
any consequences. He believes that this thing he de- 



COURAGE AND COWARDICE OF SIN 217 



sires is worth paying for, or he shuts his eyes to the 
fact that payment will be demanded. Tell him in 
the heat of his passion that this will follow, and 
this, and this. Show him the inevitable conse- 
quences, what he risks, what he must lose, what may 
happen. He will say in the spasm of Dutch courage, 
Let it happen, let it all come, let the consequences be 
what they may, this I must have and shall. It is 
madness if you will, derangement of judgment ; but 
that is part of the deceitfulness of sin, the way temp- 
tation overturns the will and unseats the reason. 

Is it only a leaf from ancient history this, or has 
it a living moral for living men and women to-day ? 
Does not the drunkard know all that you can tell 
him, better than you can tell him, what he is paying 
for his sin, what he is losing, what he must suffer and 
cause others to suffer ? He knows it and in a way he 
counts the cost, but when the fierce temptation strikes 
him he will say that he will take the consequences. 
It is derangement of judgment, giving for the mo- 
ment a kind of daring, a spurious courage like the 
hoarse cry of priests and people that day in Jerusa- 
lem, " His blood be upon us and on our children." It 
is no musty moral from an old record, but a fact 
true to human nature now as ever, where the same 
temptations strike the same place in the heart, and 



218 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



the same devil's reasoning deludes the soul. When 
the mad jealousy finds its seat in Cain's mind, when 
the smell of the pottage rises to Esau's nostrils, when 
the lust kindles in David's eye, when the jingle of 
the silver sounds in Judas' ear, when hate grows in 
the priests' heart and rage grips the mob before 
Pilate's seat, passion in each case sweeps away the 
defences and consequences are nothing. Any price 
so it be afterwards, the consequences be ours — we 
take them — the blood be on us I But when the pas- 
sion has cooled and the price is demanded the tune 
changes, the whole situation looks different, the con- 
sequences which were despised when remote loom 
up in their true proportions. The daring tails off 
into weakness : the courage turns to cowardice. The 
confident cry, " His blood be upon us," becomes the 
whine, " Ye intend to bring this man's blood upon 
us." How differently things look before and after ! 

It reminds us of the old stories of men selling 
themselves to the devil, signing a contract by which 
special powers are granted with the chance of every 
gratification for a term of years. The stories show 
us the man beginning with the idea that he is getting 
a good bargain and rather over-reaching the devil. 
The other side of the paction is meanwhile far-off 
and is assented to with an airy easy assurance. The 



COURAGE AND COWARDICE OF SIN 219 



man is boastful of his powers, and is willing to accept 
all the consequences. When the term expires and 
the time for payment comes, a different song is sung. 
The stories show the man trying to convince himself 
that he has no responsibility, that the payment will 
never be demanded. He puts all the blame on the 
devil and none on himself. Something will be sure 
to happen to relieve him of his side of the paction. 
Then we see him in the climax of terror and alarm 
as the moment arrives; and the story ends with a 
mysterious disappearance, the squaring up of the 
liabilities. 

The courage and the cowardice of sin! We see 
them exemplified every day. We recognise them in 
our own hearts at the two different stages, both often 
false. It is part of the deceitfulness of sin to deceive 
us in both stages, in the first to convince us that the 
consequences are nothing, and in the second to drive 
us to despair. Let not passion blind you to the fact 
that we live in a moral world governed by moral 
cause and effect as well as physical. What men some- 
times call chance, and sometimes call fate, God calls 
consequence. " Be not deceived, God is not mocked, 
whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." 
" His blood be on us and on our children," cried the 
J ews on that fatal day, thinking that it meant noth- 



220 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



ing, that they were only idle words. The words may 
have been idle, but the deed was not idle and bore its 
dread fruits. The fickleness and folly and prejudice 
and impenitence and cruelty, of which the deed 
spoke, brought their harvest in kind ; and upon them 
came all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, 
from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of 
Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom they slew between 
the temple and the altar, and the more precious blood 
still of Jesus, whom they slew and hanged on a tree. 
Every page of their history since shows how tragic- 
ally true their own self -judgment was that madly and 
blindly called for the blood to be on them and on 
their children. Spurn the subtle temptation which 
suggests that sin has no consequences. Distrust the 
spurious courage which shuts the eyes to risks. Ke- 
f use to listen to the folly that a man can sow the wind 
and yet somehow avoid the necessity of reaping the 
whirlwind. 

In the other stage the deceitfulness of sin works 
equally falsely and insidiously, tempting a man this 
\j time to despair, suggesting that he is now past re- 
demption, that he has made his bed and must lie on 
it, and that the best he can do is to evade as much as 
possible any disagreeable consequences. When evil 
can no longer deny moral results and moral punish- 



COURAGE AND COWARDICE OF SIN 221 



ments, its last resource is to deny redemption, deny 
forgiveness, deny hope. " Ye intend to bring this 
man's blood upon us," querulously complained the 
priests. Yes, he did, as boldly he charged them, " Ye 
slew Him and hanged Him on a tree." But he had 
also a deeper and further intention, if they would 
but throw down their wretched defences, and confess 
their guilt and shame. He intended to show how 
they too might be cleansed by the penitential fires, 
how they too might be broken by that cross and saved 
by that blood. For them, too, was possible forgive- 
ness, pardon, and peace, with their cruel eyes washed 
soft by tears, and their vile hearts washed clean by 
blood. For them, too, brooded the divine love and 
pity. 

In this world of moral cause, of just law, of 
righteous judgment, let no man presume. Be not de- 
ceived ; God is not mocked. In this world of grace, 
and love, and mercy, and compassion, this world 
which was the scene of Christ's life and ministry, 
this world for which Christ died, let no man despair. 



XX 



PERMISSION WITHOUT SANCTION 

And God said unto Balaam, Thou shalt not go with them. 
. . . And God came unto Balaam at night and said unto him, 
If the men come to call thee, rise up and go with them. . . . 
And God's anger was kindled because he went. — Numbers 
xxii. 12, 20-22. 

I do not propose at this time to enter into a consid- 
eration of the complex character of Balaam as re- 
lated in this story, except in so far as it may illus- 
trate the subject suggested by our text. These words 
we have chosen touch some of the deepest problems 
of life and religion, the problems that circle round 
the subject of the place and freedom of the human 
will. I wish to treat it as little philosophically as 
possible, and as practically and ethically as I can. 
It is not necessary to enlarge much on the setting of 
our text. The situation of Balaam at this point of 
the narrative is a common one, allowing for the dif- 
ferences of time and custom and the accidentals of 
life. It is simply the situation of a man keenly de- 
sirous of doing something which he knows to be 

222 



PERMISSION WITHOUT SANCTION 223 



wrong, and who seeks to reconcile a real conscien- 
tiousness with his desire. 

Balak offers him things which his heart covets, if 
he will go to him and curse for him the Israelites. 
Balaam is persuaded in his own mind that he cannot 
do this as things stand, that it will be contrary to the 
will of God who has blessed Israel ; and yet he would 
fain earn the reward in some way without being ab- 
solutely false. He would not accept once for all the 
plain intimation of God's will and the simple ac- 
ceptance of duty; but at the same time he is de- 
termined not to disobey the dictates of conscience. 
This at least is his attitude to begin with. When 
Balak' s messengers came with the bribes and prom- 
ises, he held firm to what he believed to be God's 
will, and came out of the shock of the first tempta- 
tion unharmed. " God said unto Balaam, Thou shalt 
not go with them. And Balaam rose up in the morn- 
ing and said unto the princes of Balak, Get ye into 
your own land: for the Lord refuseth to give me 
leave to go with you." He had no doubt in his mind 
as to what God's will was in the matter, and he stated 
that unflinchingly in spite of the fact that he fain 
would have gone; and if nothing further had oc- 
curred, it would all have looked like a moral victory 
for Balaam ; and indeed, so it was to some extent. 



224 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



But it is not the way of temptation to come once 
and be content with a single repulse. On Balaam's 
refusal a still more imposing embassy was sent with 
more lavish promises of reward. If the former oc- 
casion had represented a complete moral victory, this 
would not have been much of a temptation. The 
prophet could only have repeated his refusal. He 
had learned what his duty was. But, enticed by the 
promised bribes, he cast about for some way of getting 
what his heart was set on. He thought he might pos- 
sibly obtain leave to do what God had before forbid- 
den. Instead of sending the envoys away, he bade 
them wait in the hope that he might be able to get a 
more favourable answer. He seemed to succeed ; for 
he did receive permission to go. " God said unto 
him, If the men come to call thee, rise up and go with 
them." Nothing was really altered. He knew he 
was not allowed to curse instead of bless. But he 
still hoped that some further concession might be 
granted which would enable him to earn the reward. 
He was only entering into temptation, getting nearer 
to it, playing with it, going with open eyes into a 
situation which would inevitably make it more dif- 
ficult for him to be true. The permission he received 
to go did not change the facts of the case, did not 
alter God's will, could not alter it; it only brought 



PERMISSION WITHOUT SANCTION 225 



Balaam himself into deeper waters, and gave him a 
harder battle to fight with temptation ; it was a long 
step towards the ultimate degradation and the final 
plunge. 

This is no character-sketch of Balaam; or there 
would here lie on the very surface for us many les- 
sons of warning and counsel, warnings about the be- 
ginning of evil and the genesis of sin in the mind, 
and dallying with temptation. I prefer just now to 
touch a deeper thought suggested by the words of 
our text, with their startling contrast, " God said 
unto Balaam, Go. ... And God's anger was 
kindled because he went." Subtle and complex as 
Balaam's character may have been, it contains no 
such strange and dark mystery as the mystery of 
God's providence shadowed forth in these astounding 
words. At first it seems a mistake, an impossible 
reading of events. What tragedy, and what mystery 
underlie these sentences, " God said unto Baalam, 
Thou shalt not go with them." And then because 
Balaam wanted it, longed for it, set his heart on it, 
" God said unto him, Go." And all the time he was 
going to his own hurt, compassing his life about with 
many evils. " God's anger was kindled against him 
because he went." The paradox of Balaam's char- 
acter, great as it is, is nothing to the appalling para- 



m§ THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



dox that God should permit what is against His will 
— that a man should receive a permission which was 
not a sanction. 

Yet is not this the common situation of us all ? Is 
this not the invariable environment of all moral life, 
that we are allowed to enter into temptation, al- 
lowed to go against the very will of God ? That this 
should be so, that man should possess such terrible 
power, seems the great mystery of our life ; and yet 
it cannot be otherwise if we are to remain men. It is 
no isolated instance, this case of Balaam's. Right 
through the Bible we find the same explanation of 
this weird power of man to go against God and to get 
his way against God to his own undoing; as when 
Israel desired a king, in order to be like other na- 
tions, rather than be a theocracy in which they had 
no king but God, it is stated that God gave them a 
king in His anger; or the Psalmist's explanation of 
the fatal time in the desert, when the Israelites lusted 
after the flesh-pots of Egypt and despised the manna ; 
and when the flesh-meat came it brought with it a 
terrible plague from which many died. The Psalm- 
ist points the same moral, " They lusted exceedingly 
in the wilderness and tempted God in the desert. 
And He gave them their request; but sent leanness 
into their soul." 



PERMISSION WITHOUT SANCTION <W 

It represents a fact of moral life. Permission 
which implied no sanction, nay, which carried with 
it inevitable danger! We sometimes ask why it 
should be so, and wonder if it might not have been 
otherwise. Is it necessary that we should have to 
run such risks and undergo such menace % If God's 
anger is to be kindled against Balaam if he went, 
why ever permit him to go? If to agree to the 
Israelites' request means to send leanness into their 
souls, why ever give them their request ? This is the 
great mystery of sin, and the great mystery (of 
which it is a part) of man's free will, which means 
freedom to do wrong as well as to do right, freedom 
to sin, freedom to go against the law of our own be- 
ing and against the law of God and the will of God. 
In this respect God cannot keep from us what we 
want. God does not — cannot — violate man's will, 
compelling him as by physical necessity to do right. 
It would cease to be a moral world, and we would 
cease to be men in the sense we are. Only moral 
means can be used to achieve a moral end. Thus the 
place of a man in the spiritual kingdom is settled 
not by his gifts, or attainments, or capacities, or ac- 
tions even, but by his will. When Balaam desired, 
longed, willed to go, what could even God do but say 
to him, " Go " ? 



228 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



For, notice further, that from the point of view of 
pure morality the evil was done. The birth of sin 
is not in the sinful act, but in the sinful desire. 
Lady Macbeth's argument to her husband, after he 
had planned the murder of Duncan, and then wav- 
ered — not because he repented, but partly for reasons 
of fear, and partly for reasons of policy — is a cogent 
argument from the purely moral point of view. Her 
argument is that he was guilty of the crime already, 
since it was still in his heart. 

Art thou afeard 
To be the same in thine own act and valour, 
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that 
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, 
And live a coward in thine own esteem; 
Letting I dare not wait upon I would, 
Like the poor cat i' the adage? 

Not that a man who thinks evil may as well go on 
to commit the evil, though that is the devil's argu- 
ment which comes to many a man, and which Lady 
Macbeth made use of in the passage quoted ; but that 
the first guilt of sin does lie in the evil will ; and an 
evil will only needs opportunity in order to blossom 
out into the full-blown crime, or vice, or cruelty, or 
shame. Balaam had disobeyed God in his heart be- 
fore he set out for Balak's court. He was not really 
a worse man through the permission to go. Indeed, 
it was perhaps the only chance for him to become 



PERMISSION WITHOUT SANCTION 229 



a better man by being compelled to realise that he 
was offending God. This permission to go was only 
the natural and even the inevitable result of the 
kindling passion in his heart. 

What we lust after, what we give our heart to, 
what we really request from God and from man, 
what we desire as our chief good and foster in our 
thoughts as the imperious need of our lives, that we 
cannot but get. Though it be tempting God as the 
Israelites did, God will give us our request, though 
it means sending leanness into our soul. When we 
make our deliberate, conscious, persistent choice, the 
mere practical form it takes is a detail. If our mind 
is ever turning towards some darling sin, as Balaam 
lusted after the reward, how can we, in a world like 
this, which is built on moral principles, be prevented 
from carrying our desire into action? We cannot 
will the evil, and be saved from all the consequences 
and the fruits of evil. The sin of the heart only 
lacks an opportunity to be turned into conduct ; and 
God cannot keep the opportunity from us for ever. 
The evil is already done, when the heart is wholly 
given up to it. Sooner or later we have our way. We 
persist : we tempt God for it : we desire it : we seek it : 
we will have it and must have it — take it, the sin and 
its sting, " Go. . . . And God's anger was kindled 
because he went." 



230 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



Safety is to be found alone in the sphere wherein 
lies the danger, in the will. Even from the most sin- 
ful life and surroundings there is ever a point of de- 
parture for each of us in the will. The free will of 
man is at last justified, and only then, when it is 
freely given to God. If sin finds its hold and seat 
there, so also does salvation. We always come back 
to heart-religion ; for nothing else is of any avail. No 
outside prevention, no careful cleansing of the out- 
side of cup and platter is of use. Even if Balaam had 
not gone and yet had his heart full of covetousness, 
the mere abstention was nothing. Balaam is only 
safe when he does not even want to go since it is 
against God's will. He is only safe if he would not 
go though he could, since he knows it is contrary to 
the will of God. Only that will is safe, which is con- 
formed to the will of God, which really seeks to do 
the will of God, which is guarded and inspired, at 
once protected and driven, by the will of God. Only 
that heart is safe which is fixed upon God. The ideal 
for man is a holy will which voluntarily chooses the 
good, which says, " Lo, I come to do Thy will, O 
God." If we make God's will our will, His way shall 
be our way; and when He bids us go, we need fear 
no evil, for He is with us, even in the dark valley of 
the shadow of death. 



XXI 



RIGHTFUL CONFORMITY 

Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all 
righteousness. — St. Matthew iii. 15. 

One of the practical problems of life is to know how 
far we should comply with established custom and 
conventional ways of both thinking and acting. At 
first sight it appears an easy question to decide by 
saying broadly and generally that every man is in the 
last resort responsible for himself, and ought there- 
fore to do what seems right in his own eyes, refusing 
to submit to the authority of numbers, and the as- 
sumed sacredness of custom which would drag all 
alike down to the same dead dull level. To conform 
to others in anything is to lose the most precious gift 
of independence, which alone makes progress possible 
for the race. No man should be asked to give up his 
own opinions, to acquiesce in traditional standards, 
to comply with accepted habits. We have our in- 
dividual lives to live, and not any man, and not all 
men, can arrogate the place of judge. Freedom of 
thought, independence of action are indisputable 

231 



232 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



rights which follow from the sense of personal re- 
sponsibility. If man's life should be ruled by 
conscience (and all schools of morals not only admit 
this, but insist on it), if the moral burden of de- 
cision rests on a man's own soul ; then he must be al- 
lowed to rule his own course, he must not be terror- 
ised by mere convention and expected to conform to 
what others think right ; nay, if need be, he must be 
allowed to dissent from the opinions, and practices, 
and beliefs, and manner of living of others. 

In theory at least, every school of thought grants 
this freedom. In political affairs this is the founda- 
tion of all democratic government. The majority 
governs, but it is left to the minority to become a 
majority whenever it can, by protesting, by influenc- 
ing opinion. The same is true in the region of ab- 
stract thought. The mind of man has been freed 
from the shackles of mere authority. Men need not 
think according to pattern. They need not give in to 
any prejudice or any custom whatever. And re- 
ligiously this nonconformity is an accepted prin- 
ciple : it is at the very heart of all personal religion, 
which starts with the idea of personal responsibility. 
This freedom from the bondage of others' opinion 
was St. Paul's claim for all Christians. " To his own 
Master he standeth or falleth. Who art thou that 



RIGHTFUL CONFORMITY 233 



judgest another man's servant? We must all stand 
before the judgment seat of Christ " — therefore, we 
need not stand before the judgment seat of men now. 
This is the inevitable implication from the personal 
relationship between God and the human soul on 
which religion is based. 

All this is easy in theory. Freedom is the natural 
right of man. All conformity with others for mere 
conformity's sake is sinful cowardice, an abrogation 
of the rights of man. This would seem to settle the 
question, and make the title of our sermon, " Right- 
ful Conformity," a contradiction in terms. But in 
practice this doctrine of unlimited liberty does not 
work out so well. If we lived separated lives, apart 
from each other, with no responsibility for others, and 
no duties towards others ; if we were able to shut our- 
selves off from the impact of other lives on ours, 
there would be no difficulty. But we live in society, 
with social obligations, with mutual interdependence. 
The whole problem of living is how to adjust the 
rights of others with the undoubted rights of self. 
How far in practice can we carry out our doctrine 
of freedom ? Is it unlimited ? We need only ask the 
question to know the answer. The social bond, 
through which all progress hitherto has been ac- 
quired, would be impossible under such a strain. If 



234 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



minorities have rights, does the mind of the majority 
count for nothing? Practically in every region of 
thought and activity, in business, in politics, in 
social duties, we are ever face to face with this ques- 
tion, Is it not necessary often to come to a compro- 
mise when we differ, a modifying of some element of 
what we consider truth in order to work and live to- 
gether ? 

Now as a matter of fact we have to make con- 
cessions, and do make them in every sphere of life ; 
give up some of our liberty of thought and action; 
even comply with the opinion and feelings of others. 
You see the problem that emerges. Theoretically we 
should ever be independent truth-seekers in things 
of intellect, fearless followers of right in things of 
conscience, thinking, and saying, and doing every- 
thing according to our own mind and heart, un- 
fettered by the conventions of the present and by the 
traditions of the past: and yet practically we know 
that we are not so free as our theory makes out ; we 
know that this liberty of ours is qualified by the 
facts of social life. 

In religion the problem is keener than elsewhere, 
for the reason that religion deals with the very soul 
of man. St. Paul, who formulated his doctrine of 
freedom from the interference of men in the things 



RIGHTFUL CONFORMITY 235 



of the spirit, yet professed that he would become all 
things to all men, and made expediency almost a 
principle. He was too shrewd and too sane a man to 
think that he could serve the cause he had at heart by 
running counter to every established custom, and of- 
fending every prejudice. To him also the new faith 
was the fruition of the old, as every faith must be 
to be worth anything to the world; and so the new 
had to displace the old, not by cataclysm, but by 
growth. St. Paul, therefore, would go as far as he 
could in compromise. For example, circumcision was 
nothing to him, and he would never consent to make 
it essential for Gentiles to be circumcised, but he 
would not prohibit Jews from continuing the old 
rite of their race; and even himself circumcised 
Timothy, in order to avoid giving offence to the 
Jews. 

In this attitude he was only following the example 
of J esus, as illustrated from the passage of our text, 
" Suffer it to be so now." From this attitude of our 
Lord we can learn some things which should help us 
to solve our practical difficulty. Our Lord did not 
renounce the religion of His fathers. He was a re- 
former, an innovator, and the effect of His work was 
to make old things pass away and make all things 
new. But the key-note of all His teaching was that 



236 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



He came not to destroy but to fulfil. The true re- 
former is never an iconoclast, bent only on destruc- 
tion, ever denouncing, ever tearing down the old with- 
out an eye to what is to replace the old. Men cannot 
start fresh as if the past had brought no gains and no 
conditions. Progress is nothing if it is not growth, 
and growth implies roots. Every human institu- 
tion has roots in the past, long roots. To cut the 
roots is to kill the plant. John the Baptist was a 
voice crying in the wilderness, a protester, apart from 
the life of his time, and so his work has had no last- 
ing influence. He was a nine days' wonder, and af- 
fected the surface of his time, but that was all. Our 
Lord's work was essentially related to the life of the 
past and of the present ; and so it has been the life of 
the future ever since. It was intensely original, and 
aimed at reformation so great that it amounted to 
revolution; but it was joined on to life, and carried 
forward all that was good in the past. He con- 
formed with all the law as pious J ews did. He was 
circumcised: He kept the feasts and went up to 
Jerusalem as others did : He went to the Synagogue 
as the custom was : He paid the temple-tax ; and here 
we find Him submitting to J ohn's baptism, even when 
John protested that it was unseemly that he should 
do it. 



RIGHTFUL CONFORMITY 237 



John did not know Jesus as we know Him, prob- 
ably had no very clear conception of Christ's charac- 
ter ; but he was sufficiently impressed by Him to feel 
the incongruity of the situation. And this fact that 
Jesus submitted to be baptised must have meant a 
difficulty to many Christians reading it in the Gos- 
pels, if this explanation given by our Lord had not 
been stated. For was it not admitting almost in- 
feriority, or at least admitting need like other weak 
men? Does it not take away from His dignity? 
Should such an original teacher conform to the pre- 
scribed rules and forms of his predecessors? Jesus 
sought to show John the essential seemliness and fit- 
ness of it. " Suffer it to be so now ; for thus it be- 
come th us to fulfil all righteousness." 

Every religious form that could be useful to the 
spiritual life would be used by Him. Just because 
He was above all forms, He would take them and fill 
them with new meaning ; carry them forward into the 
new era. Christ was a Jew, and so took on Him all 
the privileges and all the disabilities of His race, 
entering into human history where it was, coming as 
a man among men, not as a bolt out of the blue. God 
had spoken to men through the law and the prophets ; 
He did not come to destroy the law and the prophets, 
but to carry them out to their true fulfilment. He 



238 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



took up the task and the burden where it was, and led 
men on to a higher life. To have done otherwise, to 
have ridden rough-shod over the dearest possessions 
of Jewish history, even if that were His ultimate 
aim, would have been bad policy. He never could 
have ushered in the new era by such means. And it 
would have shown that He did not understand the 
real state of the case and the real problem of human 
development. 

Many would-be reformers err here, laying em- 
phasis on accidental details, irritating people by 
stupid protests, which even if they could be carried 
would not touch the real point. There is an impro- 
priety in many protests, which are only evidence of 
bad taste and want of sense — sometimes by putting 
stress on little things, lacking the sound sense of 
Richter (as Mr. Hamilton Mabie puts it in an Essay 
on the Failings of Genius) — Eichter, " who when he 
found that his habit of omitting the omnipresent col- 
lar from his toilet set all tongues a-wagging, wisely 
concluded to conform to the fashion in a trivial mat- 
ter, in order that he might put his whole strength 
into a struggle on vital principles." Of course, if a 
man's aim is to come out as a reformer of dress, it is 
his duty to take liberties with the ordinary civilised 
toilet. But if he has deeper things in his mind, he is 



RIGHTFUL CONFORMITY 239 



only giving needless offence and risking his great 
cause by indulging the vanity of eccentricity. 

Another common way in which reformers hurt 
their own cause is by refusing to take any bread be- 
cause they cannot get the whole loaf, refusing any 
compromise even that will meanwhile advance their 
cause. A man may be a Republican in theory, and 
may hold that Monarchy is wrong and a weakness, to 
any nation; but even on his own grounds, it would 
be foolish to refuse to take part in any movement 
which had the good of the people at heart because 
it was not done under his ideally perfect government. 
A man may be a Prohibitionist in theory, but if he 
refuses even to work with any who have smaller 
schemes in hand because they do not go so far as his 
views, he is a traitor to his own cause. The principle 
can be applied to every sphere of progress. A man 
may have a nobler conception of religion than that of 
the Churches, a more spiritual and more living faith ; 
but the question for him to settle with himself is 
whether he is justified in separating from the wor- 
ship of his fellows. To cut yourself off from the life 
of your time is to mutilate your own life and to im- 
poverish the life of others. It prevents you from 
really understanding and helping them. You make 
yourself a voluntary outlaw, with no relation to 



240 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



others. Some reformers have too many corners and 
angularities about them to allow others to work along 
with them. 

]Now there are times when it is necessary for true 
men to make their protest, to refuse any compromise, 
to wash their hands of any complicity with an 
established state of things, times when conformity is 
sinful and cowardly, and nonconformity alone is 
right (and with that side I hope to deal in my next 
sermon), but there is a reverence which is becoming 
to us even when we see imperfections in the form 
which tempts us to protest. Our Master's view 
even of baptism was larger and grander than John's 
view; for to John it was the baptism of repentence 
merely, but to Jesus it meant also entrance into the 
fuller, larger life, the life of love; yet He said, 
" Suffer it to be so now; for it becometh us to fulfil 
all righteousness." 

This attitude is not the indifference of those to 
whom nothing matters much, and who choose to con- 
form just to save themselves from the pain of pro- 
test ; nor is it confession of failure, the pessimism of 
Matthew Arnold's intolerably sad poem of unfaith, 

Creep into thy narrow bed, 
Creep and let no more be said. 
Let the long contention cease. 



RIGHTFUL CONFORMITY 241 



Geese are swans and swans are geese. 
Let them have it how they will. 
Thou art tired; best be still. 

That is a counsel of despair, ceasing to protest be- 
cause there is no longer any more fight in him, giving 
up the conflict in weariness, the unbelief which won- 
ders whether it can ever be worth the sacrifice for a 
man to run counter to the customs to which the world 
is wedded. That sort of conforming is the essence of 
weakness, laying down the arms in a mood of hope- 
lessness. When our Lord said, " Suffer it to be so 
now," it was a prelude to victory, taking a form which 
to many was dead, and filling it with living meaning, 
reverently using what had represented a great re- 
ligious truth to many a soul, and carrying it forward 
to the new and larger future. It altogether depends 
on the spirit as to whether conformity with any es- 
tablished rite is a sign of weakness or of strength, a 
crime and a cowardice, or a virtue and a glory. 

For (and this is the touchstone to try our own 
motives), the motive of our Lord's conformity related 
in our text was not worldly-wisdom, not the crafti- 
ness of wily ecclesiasticism seeking to make men 
imagine He accepted forms He really meant to de- 
stroy. Its ethical motive was love. It was not that 
He needed to be baptised, not to confess sin, but a 



242 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



desire to stand beside others. It was the fruit of 
sympathy, seeking to identify Himself with men, 
sinning sorrowing men, whom He longed to save and 
lead to God. There was a seemliness about it hid 
even to John's eyes. It became Him who for love's 
sake was to be baptised with another baptism. Well 
did it become Him to fulfil all the law even in form 
who came to fulfil it in very essence. Love is the 
fulfilling of the law. 

If love akin to the Master's is in your heart, you 
will be saved from any of the dangers and tempta- 
tions which accompany conformity with what you 
acknowledge is imperfect. You will never conform 
through sluggishness and love of ease, or through 
indifference and despair of good; but because you 
will not be separated from your brethren, but will 
work for them and strive with them and give your 
life in their service, seeking to lead them to higher 
things ; not haughtily and proudly standing aloof in 
fancied superiority, but one with them in all things. 
Your conformity will never be selfish, to avoid 
trouble or pain to yourself; but inspired by the love 
which gives unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace. 
You will be all things to all men, if by any means you 
may gain some. 



xxn 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 

The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses* seat: all there- 
fore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; 
but do not ye after their works: for they say and do not. — 
St. Matthew xxiii. 3. 

Again and again in the course of His public minis- 
try our Lord was forced into opposition to the re- 
ligious leaders of His time. He was thwarted and 
obstructed in His work. His teaching was met with 
contemptuous indifference in the first instance, and 
afterwards with active and inveterate enmity. They 
stood in the way of enlightenment for the people; 
and did all that envy and malice could do to counter- 
act His influence. This attitude of opposition was 
none of His choosing. He was not a mere destruc- 
tive reformer, a critic of existing things, an image- 
breaker who looked upon the breaking of images as 
in itself a great work. He came not to destroy but to 
fulfil. It is true that the fulfilment implied the pass- 
ing of the old into new forms, and would mean 
change, the displacement of some cherished ideas and 

243 



244 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



practices, the transformation of the letter by the in- 
spiring spirit. But the attitude which our Lord 
took to the religion of His day was not one of criti- 
cism, or of negation. He was scrupulous in con- 
forming to all the law, as we saw in the last sermon 
in considering His attitude to J ohn the Baptist when 
he submitted to be baptised by Him. 

He knew that much had to be changed in Jewish 
religion before it could bless the Isles with its law: 
it was His life-work to change it. But He never cut 
Himself off from the religion of His time: never 
disfranchised Himself as a Jew. If He had, where 
would He have begun, where got foothold to pursue 
His work? If He had been a mere protester, a 
mere destructionist, much good of a kind might have 
been done, abuses might have been remedied, and 
reforms been introduced as a result of His criticism, 
but there would not have been the great reach for- 
ward to a spiritual religion. The God who spoke to 
men in Christ was the same God who had spoken at 
sundry times in diverse manners unto their fathers 
by the prophets. His revelation was the sum and 
completion of all previous revelations, the perfect 
round of which these were the broken arcs. On all 
occasions, even when denouncing and condemning, He 
safeguarded the law itself. He would not give ex- 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 245 



cuse for any of His hearers to imagine that the law 
was abrogated because He criticised the interpreters 
of the law. The law of God is the law of all life; 
and " till heaven and earth pass away one jot or 
tittle of the law shall in no wise pass away." 

So here, when the fundamental differences between 
Christ and the Pharisees reached a climax, when He 
was compelled to pronounce upon them the most 
scathing condemnation, He is still consistent with 
His whole attitude of conformity. He recognises the 
Scribes and Pharisees in so far as they sit in Moses' 
seat, in so far as they teach the law; and He calls 
upon His audience to reverently bend to the yoke of 
the law. " All whatsoever they bid you observe, 
that observe and do." Christ did not wish His hear- 
ers to think that because He condemned the Pharisees 
they were at liberty to release themselves from the 
moral obligation of the law of God. He enforces 
upon them the duty of complying with the demands 
of the law. Never once did He preach rebellion ; or 
let men dream that they could reach any solution of 
difficulties by simply cutting themselves off from the 
life of their time. At this very moment, when He 
Himself is breaking irrevocably with the religious 
leaders of Israel, He prefaces His indictment with 
an admonition to obey. The teaching underlying 



246 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



these awful woes is really conservative in its tone, 
protecting the essential good of Jewish religion. 
The true reformer is the true conservative. He de- 
stroys abuses that the good of the past may be pre- 
served. 

Still the whole passage is a protest, burning with 
the white heat of dissent, preaching the need and the 
duty of nonconformity. The keynote of it is struck 
at the very first in these words, " Do not ye after 
their works." The problem of how far we should 
comply with established custom in thinking and act- 
ing is a very real one. It confronts us in every region 
of life. In business, and politics, and ordinary social 
duty, and religion we are continually face to face with 
it. It is not only the political or social or religious 
reformer who feels the pinch of the problem ; though 
to him it is perhaps keener. But every young man 
especially, before his manner of thinking and way of 
living have got set and hardened, is presented with the 
problem in some of its forms. How far should he 
accept compromise, and make the best of the pres- 
ent conditions, and just take things as they are, and 
conform himself to the accepted views and habits of 
his circle? He begins business, and enters at once 
into a certain atmosphere for which he is not re- 
sponsible, with recognised customs of trade and 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 247 



standards of obligation. Is lie to accept these as 
sacred, the unalterable conditions of his particular 
lot? Or is he to run counter to tradition and con- 
ventional usage in the interests of what he considers 
a higher morality? He wants to do what is right; 
he wants to keep his hands clean and his heart pure. 
But he finds that he cannot start fresh even in busi- 
ness. He soon finds that he can do right things 
wrongly, and hurt the cause he has at heart. 

He may become hypersensitive, laying stress upon 
minor points and accidental details, needlessly creat- 
ing offence and opposition, which he finds afterwards 
might have been avoided with a little more tact. He 
can run amuck against cherished notions that do not 
count much one way or another, mistaking windmills 
for giants. Or, on the other hand, he can settle down 
to the common standards of his circle, the approved 
morality and traditional customs of others, however 
alien to his true spirit. Life is not an easy thing to 
a man of mind and heart and soul ; and this problem 
of conformity is not an academic and interesting in- 
tellectual discussion. No young man can begin life 
anywhere, in business, or office, or in one of the pro- 
fessions, without having this subject forced on him 
somehow. He has to make up his mind about the un- 
written but strong laws which custom binds on men, 



248 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



the standards of commercial morality, the customs of 
trade, the etiquette of profession, the social ma- 
chinery of which he is a part. 

In the region of opinion and belief, the difficulty 
is no less real. We are born into an intellectual and 
spiritual climate, as well as a physical. Are we to 
set up our own individual opinion against the 
thoughts and faith of our time ? How far must we 
be willing to make compromise in order to achieve 
some purpose we desire? In politics, for example, 
should a man be a member of a party, since that in- 
evitably means that he must be ready to concede in 
some things more than he would like, and in other 
points take less than he thinks right, in order to get 
something practicable done? If he does enter a 
party, he must make concessions, must comply with 
the feelings and even the prejudices of others, must 
modify some side of what he considers truth, must 
conform with the opinions of others in order to work 
along with them. Or should he be a free-lance, bend- 
ing to no yoke but his own will, making no compro- 
mise, giving in to no judgment but his own ? In the 
one case he runs the risk of being false to truth and 
conscience ; in the other he runs the risk of wasting 
his life, and being put aside as a hopeless irrecon- 
cilable. In the deepest of all questions, in religion, 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 249 



the same problem of conformity arises. Should a 
man stand aloof from the worship of his brethren, 
because he does not see eye to eye with them in all 
points of faith and Church government? Must we 
not give and take here, too, as well as in other 
spheres of practical life ? 

In the preceding sermon we discussed this side of 
the problem, and showed the place of rightful con- 
formity, the need of it to give continuity to life, to 
keep it from being broken up into separate and unre- 
lated fragments, illustrating it by the example of our 
Lord, who conformed in all things though He was the 
most original thinker in religion the world has ever 
seen. We saw the necessity for conformity, even in 
the interests of growth and reform. Here the whole 
line of our thinking is setting in the opposite direc- 
tion, asserting the place and function of needful non- 
conformity. To avoid the appearance of one-sided- 
ness on both occasions, I could have wished that it had 
been possible to consider both sides together. It is 
only another illustration of the terrorism of custom, 
and the need to conform even with unwritten law, 
which prohibits a preacher from taking an hour for a 
single sermon. Even with the danger of one-sided- 
ness I am glad to make this side of nonconform- 
ity the last word on the subject; for after all the 



250 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



temptations here are stronger than on the other 
side. 

Now, it is true that some dissent from accepted 
positions is due to temper and stupid self-will, or to 
eccentricity and conceit and love of heing singular. 
It is true that a man can find cheap ways to notoriety 
by protesting, and dissenting, and riding rough- 
shod over established custom. It is true that every 
young man of any intelligence is tempted to show 
his cleverness by being very advanced, and very heret- 
ical, and very unlike the common crowd. These and 
other such-like temptations to nonconformity we 
know. But, on the whole, the weight of the balance 
is on the other side. The tendency of life is to harden 
and set itself in dead forms. Much of our lives must 
be conventional — and it is easy to make the whole of 
it an unthinking conformity. The basis of every art 
is common to all artists, and while the weaker ones 
are tempted to show superiority by discarding the 
laws of art, by extravagance and outre effects, yet the 
other temptation is also real never to move outside 
the recognised limits, and, to go on repeating the old 
forms in helpless imitation. We must discriminate 
between rightful conformity and the conformity of 
dulness. 

In all things there is possible also the conformity 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 251 



of cowardice. Men shrink from the pains of dissent ; 
for where it is real and the fruit of principle, there 
is often no anguish like that of feeling oneself 
separated from one's brethren. Society sometimes 
punishes the dissenter terribly. To a sensitive man 
nothing is so painful as to be ostracised and excom- 
municated. It is easy to silence conscience which 
would prompt us to stand for truth, by telling over 
to ourselves the penalties to be paid by the truth- 
seeker. We speak of expediency, and tactfulness in 
making changes, and that is all very well in ordinary 
matters that don't involve principle; but there is a 
false expediency much worshipped to-day, an ex- 
pediency which seems to think that ignoble and de- 
grading compliance is excused by being done for the 
sake of peace. Peace is dearly bought at the ex- 
pense of principle. The whole character is en- 
feebled, and the whole life is impoverished. Timid- 
ity, fearfulness of standing alone, love of ease, can 
all be allies to war on the side of letting well, or ill, 
alone. 

If to the conformity of cowardice we add the con- 
formity of indifference, through which many a man 
refuses the noble part because he is not sufficiently 
alive to the distinctions between right and wrong; 
and if we add also the conformity of despair, of un- 



252 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



belief, which makes earnest men give up the struggle 
for truth and right in hopelessness : I say, if we con- 
sider all the temptations to think, and speak, and act 
with the multitude, we will see that we must be care- 
ful to preserve to ourselves, and to others, the right 
of freedom of conscience and of intellect, and will 
admit the need of nonconformity. 

When we realise the strength of conformity ever 
acting on us, we will guard against weak compliance, 
and will be very tender towards any who take it upon 
themselves to suffer for conscience' sake. For, after 
all, it is from the individual that the race has hope 
for the future. The rising light touches the topmost 
peak first, and is the herald of the universal dawn. 
And in the last issue a man is not absolved from com- 
plicity in evil because he has followed a multitude. 
He never can shake off his own personal responsibil- 
ity. He is called to be loyal to the truth as he knows 
it. If no man thought differently from others ; if no 
man greatly dared and was content to stand alone, 
where could progress come in for all of us ? We are 
too conformable, too gregarious, too conventional, too 
timid about being ourselves. Emerson's doctrine of 
Self-reliance is needed to brace us to the highest 
work, " Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that 
iron string. . . . Whoso would be a man must be 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 253 



a nonconformist. . . . Nothing is at last sacred 
but the integrity of yonr own mind." 

Issues come before us that demand a rigid adher- 
ence to right, to what we believe in our heart to be 
truth ; and no casuistry can alter the plain fact that 
in choosing to go with the many in the broad and easy 
way we are making the great refusal: nothing can 
take from us the responsibility of our decisions. 
Lord Bacon in his Apophthegms quotes Jason the 
Thessalian as saying that some things must be done 
unjustly that many things may be done justly. It is 
the world's favourite doctrine of expediency, which 
can excuse anything. It is a devil's doctrine, against 
which there cannot be too strong a protest. Our 
Lord's attitude towards the Pharisees, based on wise 
conformity, and yet fearless in the cause of God's 
right — our Lord's example should be our guide. It is 
never right to temporise with wrong, to participate 
in a lie, to pretend for the sake of peace that dark- 
ness is light and evil is good. What they say in ac- 
cordance with the law of God that observe and do, 
but do not ye after their works. He went to His 
death in protest. 

A good, if rough and ready, test as to your own 
character is to be found in asking what are the limits 
of compromise with yourself ? In what are you non- 



254 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



conformists, standing up against the tendencies of 
your world ? A man can know himself by what he 
does not do, by the company he does not keep, by the 
customs he will not conform to. You will not carry 
the principle too far after all that has been urged on 
the other side; for it must not be forgotten that a 
man is judged by his positives, not by his negatives. 
But you have not come to your majority as a man, 
till you have learnt negation, denial, dissent, protest, 
nonconformity. Great movements of thought have 
ever sprung from dissent. Every change must have 
a point of departure. And individually, if there is 
to be anything higher and nobler in your life than it 
has yet seen, there must be somewhere a point of de- 
parture. " Do not ye after their works " will be a 
voice that sounds in ear and heart and conscience. 

As conformity must be inspired by love, not by 
worldly-wisdom to be saved from sin, so noncon- 
formity must be inspired by truth and not by pride 
and self-opinionative conceit. It must have back of it 
the thought of God and what is well-pleasing to 
Him. Then anything is possible, even the pain 
of separation, even the desolation of loneliness. 
" What," said the cardinal legate, who had been sent 
from Rome to bring Luther to terms, " do you think 
the Pope cares for the opinion of a German boor? 



NEEDFUL NONCONFORMITY 255 



The Pope's little finger is stronger than all Germany. 
Do you expect your princes to take up arms to de- 
fend you — you, a wretched worm like you? I tell 
you, No! and where will you be then — where will 
you be then % " 

Luther answered, " Then, as now, in the hands of 
Almighty God." 



XXIII 



THE CHURCH'S APPEAL TO MEN 

Come with us and we will do thee good. Leave us not, 
I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to 
encamp in the wilderness and thou mayest be to us instead 
of eyes. — Numbers x. 29-31. 

At this point of the story of Israel, Moses and the 
rescued tribes have begun their wanderings through 
the desert. The future is full of difficulty and 
danger, though it is bright with the confidence of 
faith. Moses does not doubt but that the ultimate 
issue must be great good for all associated with the 
fortunes of Israel. He appeals to Hobab, so near 
of kin to himself, to share in that great future, to 
cast in his lot with them. " The Lord hath spoken 
good concerning Israel.' ' The blessing will rest on 
all who belong to Israel. To share in the toil is to 
share in the reward, and the reward is sure. There 
is no hesitation in the offer to Hobab. It is plainly 
for his own good that he should accept it. They are 
journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I 
will give it you ; and there is not a shadow of doubt 

256 



CHURCH'S APPEAL TO MEN 257 



in the words but that it shall be so. Moses has 
Hobab's interests at heart when he asks him to ac- 
company them. This is so even if Hobab like Moses 
himself should never enter the promised land; for 
he will be in the channel of the promise, under the 
blessing of God. For his own sake he ought to 
come, " Come thou with us and we will do thee 
good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning 
Israel." 

Hobab's reply was a refusal. Not perhaps because 
he did not believe in the future of Israel, but simply 
because he had other interests which seemed good 
enough for him without any further addition. He 
had his home and his country, and his own life to 
which he was accustomed; and he did not care to 
venture on a new enterprise. He did not specially 
want the good that Moses promised ; he did not feel 
any special need for further blessing. He was content 
with his life as it was, and had sufficient interests 
already. " I will not go ; but I will depart to mine 
own land and to my kindred." The offer did not ap- 
peal to him. He did not see it to be anything very 
special. The prospect did not appear so very promis- 
ing that he should sacrifice what he had of good. He 
quite believed that Moses was considering his inter- 
ests when he invited him to join them ; but since he 



258 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



did not feel great need of the promised good he re- 
fused. " I will not go." 

But Moses had another plea, even after this dis- 
tinct refusal, a plea under the circumstances far 
more powerful to such a man than the offer of per- 
sonal good. It was the plea not of Hobab's need of 
Israel, but of Israel's need of Hobab. He knew the 
country, knew all its dangers and resources: he was 
a man of great influence and wisdom ; and cared for 
Moses and presumably also for the great religious 
interests at stake in Israel's future. To have him 
with them would be a source of strength to all. And 
so Moses 7 invitation took another form. He appealed 
to Hobab's heart and not to his interests: he ap- 
pealed to their need of him, and no longer to any- 
thing of good that might come to himself. " Leave 
us not, I pray thee ; forasmuch as thou knowest how 
we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest 
be to us instead of eyes." He could be their guide 
and their guardian, and could be a help to them of 
untold value. He might be as their very eyes. And 
we are left to assume that this second appeal was 
successful. 

This twofold argument is the appeal the Church 
makes to men. It says with assurance, Come with us 
and we will do thee good ; for the Lord hath spoken 



CHURCH'S APPEAL TO MEN 259 



good concerning Israel. It says this with emphasis : 
it says it pleadingly. It has blessings, promises, and 
powers, of which it is sure. It knows that men are 
in need of what it possesses. It sees men living to 
little purpose and for little ends. It sees the sin and 
the sorrow. It has deep pity for the deep pathos of 
human life. Its whole work is to do men good, as it 
declares the gospel of the Kingdom, calling them to 
pardon and peace, offering them salvation, present- 
ing to them the manifold riches of Christ, pointing to 
the way of life and of joy. The heart of the true 
Church yearns over men with a great longing, seeing 
them to be, though they may know it not, wretched 
and miserable and poor and blind and naked. It has 
a message for you, which it is irreparable loss for you 
to neglect. It offers you a great and eternal good. 

Like Hobab you may think you do not specially 
need it. You may be quite content with what you 
have, and may refuse the Church's call because you 
are concerned about other things which you think 
enough for you. You have other interests which 
you imagine are sufficient for life, other ties that 
bind you to your present lot. You are not oppressed 
with any sense of need, and treat cavalierly the offer 
of good. You may even despise the deep anxiety 
displayed by the Church on your behalf, and may; 



260 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



resent the interference. Yon are not consciously in 
want. You are not, for example, overwhelmed by a 
sense of sin, stained with the guilt of it or burdened 
with the power of it — and so the offer of forgiveness 
does not seem very much to you. Salvation seems too 
far off, a promise of little practical meaning or value. 
It is not that you deny, or very much doubt, but just 
that you don't care. If you feel any of the attraction 
of religion, the invitation is to you only as a very 
lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can 
play well on an instrument ; for you hear the words — 
and that is all. You have never felt the all-control- 
ling power, nor seen the all-absorbing vision. You 
have never been driven to your knees with empty 
hands and a broken heart, blinded by the very glory 
of God, and stricken by the shame of your own sin. 

Or you have never tasted of failure and the dis- 
appointment of hope, and never realised your own 
weakness, and so are still supported by a sense of 
self-sufficiency. "When the words are uttered in your 
hearing, " Come with us and we will do thee good," 
you say, What good? It does not strike you as a 
very attractive promise. In a kind of unthinking 
way you probably admit some of the evident features 
of religion, some of the good that lies on the surface ; 
but you are not deeply enough moved by the promise 



CHURCH'S APPEAL TO MEN 261 

to take any novel step. You have your life as it is, 
and that is good enough for you. Like Hobab you 
say, " I will not go, but I will depart to mine own 
land and to my kindred." The Church's first appeal 
to you to come for your own sake, does not hold you. 
The things of the soul do not specially interest you 
and you have refused. In spite of your interest in 
many things connected with religion, you have not 
given yourself over to the cause, and bent to the 
King's Highway of the Holy Cross. 

But there is another strand in the cord with which 
the Church would grapple you. There is another ap- 
peal which comes to you, and you cannot shut your 
ears to it without feeling the sting of cowardly self- 
contempt. It is the same appeal as Moses made to 
Hobab when the first failed. He said, Come, if not 
for your own sake, come for our sake : if you do not 
need us, we need you : we are to encamp in the wil- 
derness girt round with danger, and weighted with 
heavy tasks, and you can be to us instead of eyes. If 
you will not come because the Lord hath spoken 
good concerning Israel, come to help us to achieve 
that good. " Leave us not, and thou mayest be to us 
as eyes." 

It is a powerful argument to a high heart ; and the 
Church's very existence — encamped in the wilder- 



262 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



ness, fighting the great battle against principalities 
and powers of evil, seeking, striving, suffering for 
that Promised Land, for man's higher life on earth, 
waiting for the consolation of Israel, giving itself to 
the great task of establishing the Kingdom of 
Heaven on earth — the Church's very existence is an 
appeal to you. God had spoken good concerning 
Israel whether Hobab came or stayed; but it was 
much to have Hobab's help in the great enterprise, 
much to have one who could be to them instead of 
eyes. And the Kingdom of Heaven will come with 
you or without you ; but just because it is a task high 
and hard, you should be in the thick of it, taking your 
part of the glorious burden. Though you might not 
think of coming for your own sake, can you resist 
this other appeal to come for our sake % Some will 
vibrate to the heroic note, who will be deaf to the 
sweetest music of invitation. The first appeal might 
miss some, but is there any to whom the twin appeal 
should be made in vain? There is a message not 
merely to the weak, the consciously weak, but also to 
the strong. The young who have not entered into 
some of the deepest experiences of religion and who 
are not yet conscious of need, are still not left out in 
the appeal. " I have written unto you, young men, 
because ye are strong." 



CHURCH'S APPEAL TO MEN 263 



You may be refusing the appeal of religion be- 
cause of a narrow and mistaken notion of what the 
appeal is. It is not simply an appeal to what you 
half think is the selfish side of your nature, to come 
that you may receive good, to consider your own soul, 
to concern yourself merely about your own personal 
salvation. The Christian salvation is not just sal- 
vage, rescuing the flotsam and jetsam, the human 
wreckage that strews the sea of life ; though it is the 
glory of the faith and its divinest attribute that it 
does save even the broken and battered lives of men. 
But salvation includes and implies service also. It 
is a summons to participate in a great work, to share 
in a glorious venture. Hobab, who refused to go for 
any possible good to himself, responded to the call 
for service of others. And though you may not now 
feel any deep sense of personal need, what have you 
to say to this claim upon your help ? Can you resist 
the appeal to come to our aid, as we are encamped in 
the wilderness, beset by peril in the pursuit of a great 
enterprise ? Think of the Church's task in its widest 
aspect — to claim the world for God, to let them that 
sit in darkness see the great light, anointed like the 
Church's Lord to preach the gospel to the poor, to 
heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the 
captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at 



264 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



liberty them that are bruised. Think of the terrible 
warfare to which it is committed — to subdue the 
beast in man, to oppose evil in high places and in low 
— a warfare that knows no truce, relentless, lifelong ; 
and, as here in this corner of the field we are hard 
bestead and appeal to you for reenforcement, will 
you sit at ease and refuse the call? 

You do not feel now your need of Christ ; though 
one day you will; you too will learn the emptiness of 
life without spiritual communion; you too will be 
forced to confess your weakness when heart and flesh 
fail you; for you as for others there will lurk at 
some dark corner of the road the inevitable surprise ; 
when the floods go over your head you will cry out of 
the depths like those who have tasted the desolation 
of life. But meanwhile the subject is not closed be- 
cause you think you have no need of Christ. What 
have you to say to this other appeal — that Christ has 
need of you ? Though you know nothing of the pas- 
sion of the saints, what about the service of the 
saints ? You are not sure about the supreme claims 
over your life which Christ makes ; but have you no 
opinion about the great purposes He seeks to ac- 
complish in the world, the high ends He seeks to 
serve? And as you see Him go to the world's re- 
demption, have you never thrilled to the tacit appeal 



CHURCH'S APPEAL TO MEN 265 



to come to the help of the Lord against the mighty ? 

You who may be instead of eyes, can you hold back 

ingloriously ? 

The Son of God goes forth to war, 
A kingly crown to gain; 
His blood-red banner streams afar: — 
Who follows in His train? 

Even if Christ's venture for the world be a for- 
lorn hope ; even if the fair vision of the Kingdom of 
Heaven on earth be but a beautiful dream; even if 
the foe be too strong to be dislodged; aye, even if 
there be no Promised Land at all (put it as an im- 
possible, an almost unthinkable hypothesis) ; even if 
good could never conquer evil, and love triumph over 
hate ; even then it would be the better part for you ; 
it would still be the master-light of all your seeing; 
and you could not escape the appeal Christ makes to 
you to stand by His side. This is the heroic note the 
Lord of the human heart strikes in your heart now; 
and it would be craven to refuse. " Whoso would 
serve Me, let him follow Me." 



XXIV 



THE GIFT OF YOUTH 

Let no man despise thy youth. — 1 Timothy iv. 12. 

The Apostle is instructing Timothy in his behaviour 
towards the people, how he is to teach and rule and 
make full proof of his ministry. With the fine fibre 
and sweet disposition of the young man there seems 
to have been a constitutional timidity. Of loving and 
trustful and gentle nature, he had as a defect of his 
quality an undue distrust of his own judgment, and 
was inclined to fall back on external authority. He 
lacked somewhat confidence and courage and the ro- 
buster virtues. The Apostle seems to have been 
anxious lest he should be underrated, as men are apt 
to underrate a man who lacks confidence. There is a 
type of youth which is extravagantly assertive, with 
the sublime conceit of ignorance ; but there is another 
type as common, which is too subservient to the opin- 
ions of others, easily discouraged, easily laughed out 
of opinions, or frightened out of principles, too diffi- 
dent to let it be thought that he has convictions and 

266 



THE GIFT OF YOUTH 



267 



principles from which he will not be moved. The 
writer seemed to have in mind Timothy's special 
temptation in this respect to timidity, and seeks to in- 
spire him with the necessary confidence and self-re- 
spect and the authority which his work needs and 
should give. " Let no man despise thy youth." 

It is a double-barrelled charge, to the people to re- 
spect him for his office, not to let any prejudice 
hinder his influence, and not to depreciate his work 
because of his youth ; and to himself also to give him 
a touch of independence, to brace him up to his high 
task, to make him assume the authority of truth and 
command the respect of the people. But the way he 
is to command this respect is not by insisting on the 
authority of his office, not by arrogance of manner, 
or any sort of self-assertion, but by making his in- 
fluence so true and potent that all will be compelled 
to acknowledge his claims as a teacher. The author- 
ity which depends merely on an office, on a fact of 
external position, on what we call " the cloth " 
speaking of the clergy, is a very poor sort of author- 
ity at the best. It is moral influence to which the 
Apostle here points. To gain and hold real respect 
Timothy is to make himself an example. He is to 
win his place of authority by his character, and faith, 
and zeal, and determination, and good works. " Let 



268 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



no man despise thy youth ; but be thou an ensample 
to them that believe, in word, in manner of life, in 
love, in faith, in purity." His Christian character 
and Christian conduct are to impress themselves so 
persuasively that men will forget the things that 
might prejudice them against his message, will for- 
get that he is young. 

It is not always easy for men to forget that an- 
other who assumes the right to teach, or who ad- 
vances anything original, or who is zealous over some 
reform, is young. The words which Dr. Johnson 
put into the mouth of Pitt as defending himself 
against " the atrocious crime of being a young man," 
describe the situation for many another besides Pitt. 
There is a common despising of youth, especially in 
the region of opinion, as if wisdom could only be, and 
must always be, on the side of experience. The de- 
spising may be done with a look which says plainly 
" You are very young," as the supreme and clench- 
ing argument, or which says in the presence of en- 
thusiasm and fervid zeal, " When you are old you 
will take things more calmly." That is too true, and 
indeed it constitutes the great and magnificent qual- 
ity of youth that it can glow and blaze. It is a very 
commonplace thought after all that when men are 
old they will take things more calmly, meaning only 



THE GIFT OF YOUTH 



269 



that the fires will have burned low. Cynicism is a 
poor exchange for enthusiasm. There are many and 
manifest temptations of youth, such as rashness, both 
of judgment and of conduct, hotheadedness, passion, 
unbalanced zeal, but these are all the extravagances 
of what is its finest quality. The world needs the 
strong hopefulness and buoyancy of youth, as well as 
the large experience and cautious wisdom of age. 
Youth is the motive power of the world, driving it to 
new ends, and bringing to it new hopes. 

Only the foolish despise youth: only the foolish 
look down upon it and seek ever to cramp and stifle 
it; though few even of the wise estimate aright the 
glorious gift of youth. Poets and romancers sing the 
praises of youth, but often only for its capacity of 
joy, as a wonderful time of abounding energy and 
fresh optimism, a time of joy and hope and strength. 
Older men will sometimes envy youth because of this, 
not for its opportunity, but for its capacity for en- 
joyment. Even for that it is not to be despised. The 
pleasures of health and strength, the first delight in 
the world of nature; the pleasures of friendship, 
meeting in the fresh glow of loyal feeling without 
suspicion, without self-interest, without consider- 
ing motives, without thought of anything but sym- 
pathy, and kindness, and goodwill; the pleasures of 



270 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



acquiring knowledge, of finding new intellectual in- 
terests ; the pleasures of beginning work, of entering 
on a definite pursuit ; the pleasures of acknowledging 
greatness in others, ungrudgingly admiring and lov- 
ing some without thought of jealousy or envy or 
meanness — all these and others have surely been the 
portion in some degree of all who remember their 
youth. 

I put it that way retrospectively because we do 
not recognise what a great gift youth is till we have 
lost it, or at least till it has lost its first zest. It is on 
looking back on it that we see how blessed it is or 
might have been. When we are in it we cannot esti- 
mate its full value. Thus youth is inclined to look to 
the future for its great moments, going on in 
imagination to some distant time for the best things, 
except in the season of absolute gaiety and lighthearted 
happiness with the present. On looking back we see 
what usually was forgotten, namely, not only the 
great gift youth is, but also the great responsibility, 
the wonderful opportunity of that wonderful time of 
joy and hope. Thus, far worse than letting men de- 
spise thy youth is it to despise your own youth; 
and that can be easily done by neglecting the oppor- 
tunities which make it the most solemn as well as the 
gladdest time of life. What ways youth has of 



THE GIFT OF YOUTH 



271 



despising itself and giving excuse for others to 
despise it also ! To take this great gift thoughtlessly 
and selfishly merely as a gift with no thought of it 
as an opportunity, to accept the privilege with no 
sense of responsibility, is really to despise it and to 
make it also despicable. To look upon it merely as 
a time of enjoyment and never as a time of prepara- 
tion, to take the springtime as a season of happiness 
and never as a season of sowing — that is to throw 
away the boon and despise it as worthless. No con- 
tempt of others can equal that self-contempt. 

The first great temptation of youth is the reck- 
less prodigality of itself. In youth we look upon 
health as measureless, and time as boundless, and 
our opportunities as limitless. We do not look upon 
life as a whole, the future of which will be con- 
ditioned by how we treat the present. Many a man 
afterwards has to lament the waste of his powers, 
and all his life long has to combat habits acquired 
thoughtlessly, or has to toil terribly to make up for 
lost time. What stores of enthusiasm and energy 
and moral passion are lost to the world because youth 
despises its best gifts, and squanders its powers in 
gay unconcern. If we do not learn self-control and 
industry and discipline of body and mind then, when 
can we do it? The loss to the world's best life is 



m THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



terrible, to say nothing of the loss to ourselves who 
might have been so different. It is right and natural 
to look upon the dawn of life as a time of happiness, 
to take youth as a blessed gift of joy and hope and 
strength ; but to take it merely as an occasion for per- 
sonal pleasure is infamy, a wrong to the world as 
well as an insult to God. Enjoyment may be the first 
word about youth, but the last word is judgment; 
and that should make it solemn as well as glad. " Re- 
joice, O young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart 
cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the 
ways of thy heart and in the sight of thine eyes ; but 
know that for all these things God will bring thee 
into judgment." Let no man despise thy youth — 
least of all, let no man, by self-indulgence, by weak 
surrender to dominant impulse, make his own youth 
despicable. 

There is a more subtle way still of youth despising 
itself than the common, careless indifference, or the 
reckless prodigality which are its besetting tempta- 
tions. It is by belittling its real greatness, by being 
half - ashamed of its high thoughts and noble 
passions and generous impulses. This self-pitying 
shame comes when^the spirit of the world is allowed 
to play on us undisturbed. That spirit suggests that 
enthusiasm, and ardour, and high ideals are rather 



THE GIFT OF YOUTH 273 



laughable things, at which every sensible man of the 
world smiles. These splendid visions are imprac- 
ticable, the fruit of ignorance. When we are older 
we will know better and will accommodate ourselves 
to the hard facts of life. Older people often despise 
their youth by sneering at their past earnestness, and 
rather pride themselves on having at last learned pru- 
dence and worldly interest, on knowing on what side 
their bread is buttered, and generally on being at 
last comfortably down on the common level in prac- 
tice and custom and ways of thinking. What pitiful 
apostasies there have been! The fires are damped 
down pretty low, when a man despises himself for 
once having seen the vision and once followed the 
gleam, when a man despises the time when his heart 
flamed at some great injustice, or his eye kindled 
with some great hope, or his life was given to some 
great service, and his soul trembled to the touch of 
the adorable Christ who gave it the vision splendid. 
Would the world and the Church be as they are to- 
day if there had been no apostates, no Judas to sell 
the Master for pieces of silver % 

We bless God for the old men who dream dreams, 
who once as young men saw visions, for those who 
have kept their youth, evergreen in faith, and hope, 
and love. Listen to them, and not to the blase world- 



274 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

ling whose heart is eaten out and whose dull eyes can- 
not see the shining of the glory. Believe in the ideal, 
for in that lies the hope of the world. Follow the 
gleam, as such an one when he was old sang it out to 
cheer and encourage his younger brethren to keep 
their visions and be faithful to their ideals — 

There on the border 
Of boundless ocean 
And all but in Heaven 
Hovers the gleam. 

Not of the sunlight, 
Not of the moonlight, 
Not of the starlight! 

O young mariner, 
Down to the haven. 
Call your companions, 
Launch your vessel, 
And crowd your canvas. 
And ere it vanishes 
Over the margin, 
After it, follow it, 
Follow the gleam. 

The world and the Church look to the young for 
the visions that keep us from sordid acquiescence in 
the commonplace and the accepted. It is an irrep- 
arable loss to both when these visions fail, when 
youth becomes prosaic and unaspiring, when the ideal 
loses its currency among us, when the young cease 
to picture the perfect state both for self and for 



THE GIFT OF YOUTH 



rib 



society. It always means a relaxing of the vital hold 
of religion over the community. It is the dying out 
of faith in God. One of the main functions of re- 
ligion is to keep before us the ideal; and the young 
who see visions are a natural channel of its working. 
Despise not your youth in this its best aspect. Keep 
your visions : nurse them : correct them by the mind 
of Christ. As He knocks at the door of your heart, 
offering you not merely a state of blessedness, but a 
career of service, open to Him willingly. He will 
inspire passion in you, and will regulate it ; and will 
set >ou to your work in the world for Him and for 
the brethren. He will give you a vocation which will 
fill your life, and will save it from gross temptations 
and redeem it from many evils. The heart that has 
seen the vision will never be satisfied with lower 
loves. The hand that has felt the touch of His 
finger will not move to evil ends. Bend to Him, 
responsive to His love, eager for His great service; 
and even when you become old you will dream dreams 
of beauty and peace ; and you, young men, will see 
visions of purity and joy, and noble life that will 
change the world. Let no man despise the youth 
which has in it such powers and potencies. 



XXV 



THE IMMORTALITY OF MEMORY 

The memory of the just is Messed: but the name of the 
wicked shall rot. — Proverbs x. 7. 

In the varied strands that make up human motive 
this one is not the least powerful. It is a common and 
a natural desire of men to leave a good name behind 
them. It is a pain to think of anything hereafter 
smirching their fair reputation when they can no 
longer speak for themselves. And at the last it has 
been a comfort to many a man to think that he has 
left his name untarnished, with no disgrace attached 
to it. When we think of it, it seems a strange thing 
that men should be so concerned about posthumous 
reputation. It seems due to an instinctive faith in 
immortality, a stubborn belief in the persistence of 
personality. It is more than an extension of the or- 
dinary human foible to be thought well of by friends 
and neighbours. It is a kind of feeling that what a 
man is and was and did goes with him past the gates 
of death, that there is no real break in the continuity 
of his life, and his character on earth remains as the 

276 



IMMORTALITY OF MEMORY 277 



great asset with which he stands at the bar of the 
great future. In any case this desire to leave an 
honourable memory and an unblemished reputation 
influences all men who think of the future at all. 
On the whole it is a noble motive, and has helped 
among other nobler motives to produce many a heroic 
life. Perhaps in all of us it has had some moral 
effect if only as a deterrent. 

It is also part of the same motive which induces the 
strong desire for posthumous fame. We see this 
often displayed in the lives of artists and literary 
men and statesmen. The ordinary man in all these 
branches is as a rule content if he can gain some 
hold on his own generation; but the greatest men 
have always an ideal audience and an ideal con- 
stituency to which they appeal. It is the judgment 
of posterity, which is supposed to be calmer and more 
dispassioned, with the coarser ingredients filtered out 
through the years. The poet or artist who is sure of 
himself and of his art is thus not too much disturbed 
by contemporary neglect, or when mediocrity makes 
its clamorous bid for popular favour. He appeals 
from Philip drunk to Philip sober ; he appeals from 
present prejudice to a wider and calmer tribunal. 
Even in practical life a man has often been sup- 
ported by the thought that though at present mis- 



278 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



understood and looked askance at, he will in later 
times have credit for good motives and upright ac- 
tion. And sometimes when a man is conscious that 
be has soiled his reputation by some weakness he 
thinks that in a complete review of all he has at- 
tempted and achieved he will be more tenderly 
judged, or at least his best work will " be rightly 
valued in spite of his faults. There is a pathetic 
sentence in Lord Bacon's will which suggests this, 
" For my name and memory I leave it to men's 
charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the 
next ages." Bacon knew well that he had ruined his 
reputation as a public man and needed the charitable 
judgment of his contemporaries, but he also felt that 
his great work done for human learning would re- 
ceive its meed of honour, especially when the circum- 
stances of his fall did not loom so large in men's 
minds, " in foreign nations and the next ages." The 
desire for posthumous fame or at least to leave an 
honourable memory to all whom it concerns is thus 
a very strong motive and a legitimate one in moral 
action. 

In moments of doubt we may say, What does it 
matter what men think of us when we are off the 
scene ? or in moments of cynicism we may say that 
none of us is much missed, and few if any will remem- 



IMMORTALITY OF MEMORY 279 



ber us long, and the kind of memory we bequeath is 
of little account; but these are only fleeting moods, 
and the original motive comes back in all its force. 
Hamlet's cynical remark was forced from him by his 
own keen memory of his father, " O heavens ! die 
two months ago and not forgotten yet ? Then there's 
hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half 
a year," though he thinks he must build churches 
even to attain that immortality ; but it was Hamlet's 
own regard for his father's reputation and his own 
loving memory of his father which made him cynical. 
We know that we will be remembered by some, and 
that the kind of memory they have of us will mean 
much to them, and so it means much to us. 

We know, too, that the things that really count in 
that memory are the things of character. In our 
final judgment of men the principle of judgment is 
that of our text, " The memory of the just is blessed ; 
but the name of the wicked shall rot." It is the 
statement of a fact that the ultimate standard of 
judgment among men is a moral one. Death clears 
off all adventitious and accidental details, clarifies 
vision, and shows us the essential things in a man's 
life. When our judgment is so purified by the fact 
of death our standard becomes not capacity but char- 
acter. We find ourselves classifying according to 



280 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

the old division of good and evil. Reputation in the 
general estimate of the world takes on a moral col- 
ouring. Instinctively we feel that that is the only 
thing that really counts. Other things drop off and 
pass out of sight. We begin to look at things from 
the standpoint of eternity, with something of the 
eyes of God. Things take a different perspective. 
Some of the things that counted most fall into the 
background and the simple qualities of moral char- 
acter stand in their natural precedence. The memory 
of a good man is blessed ; the memory of a bad man 
is infamy. This is a true rule of history and experi- 
ence, though we may think we can point to some ex- 
ceptions ; and there are against the rule the classical 
lines which Shakespeare makes Antony say of 
Julius Csesar, 

The evil that men do lives after them; 
The good is oft interred with their bones. 

Shakespeare puts the words into the mouth of a 
schemer, a man who is playing on the passions of the 
crowd. On the whole the opposite of Antony^ 
words is true, the good of a man's life does not die, 
and certainly it is only for the good in it that we 
ever bless him. 

The promise of our text is that men will remember 



IMMORTALITY OF MEMORY 281 



a good man and find in the memory a softening, sweet- 
ening, inspiring influence. The memory of the just is 
blessed — it makes men bless the memory with proud 
grateful recollection — and the memory blesses those 
who remember, makes them rise to a higher level of 
aspiration and endeavour. There is a true im- 
mortality of memory, not the external sort in which 
a name reverberates through the ages held in rever- 
ence and recollection by men on earth for ever — that 
sort of immortality is impossible to many, if indeed to 
any at all in any complete sense. The renown of the 
greatest poet or artist or statesman or warrior is but a 
shadowy thing at the best, to most only a name signi- 
fying nothing. New immortals take their place and 
also pass away to the shadowy realm. The pale 
ghosts elbow each other out ; and life goes on serenely 
with its own joys and sorrows and hopes and needs. 
There is no immortality of fame. Here and there a 
student revives a reputation for a dead author, or 
statesman, or king; but there are ever new candi- 
dates for the seats of the immortals, new brows for 
the laurel wreaths, new hands for the sceptre of 
power. There is not even any sure principle by 
which the remembered names are chosen: one is re- 
membered for good and another for evil, one for his 
wisdom and another for his folly. " The iniquity of 



282 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy," says Sir 
Thomas Browne in his qnaint and learned Urn 
Burial, " and deals with the memory of men without 
distinction to merit of perpetuity. Herostratus lives 
that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost 
that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of 
Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain 
we compute our felicities by the advantage of our 
good names, since bad have equal durations, and 
Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. 
Who knows whether the best of men be known, or 
whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot 
than any that stand remembered in the known ac- 
count of time ? " It is a bloodless dream after all to 
think of handing down one's name to countless gene- 
rations of men. Cowley's lines have stirred the blood 
in many an ambitious youth, 

What can I do to be for ever known, 
And make the age to come my own? 

But if there be nothing but this hopeless and 
shadowy immortality of memory to look to, then the 
cynical words of Ecclesiastes are true, " A living dog 
is better than a dead lion ; for the living know that 
they shall die; but the dead know not anything, 
neither have they any more a reward ; for the memory 
of them is forgotten." 



IMMORTALITY OF MEMORY 283 



But even in this region of memory, though there 
is no real immortality of fame, there is a real im- 
mortality of influence. Here again we are brought 
back to the fact that the ultimate standard of judg- 
ment is a moral one, that both the good and the evil 
men do live after them, the good for a blessing to all 
the world, the evil for a curse. The true and only 
permanent contribution men can make to the world 
is that they have advanced the cause of the highest; 
and the one condemnation is if they have hindered 
that cause. When a life is resolved to its elements, 
these elements are moral in the widest sense ; and the 
life comes absolutely within the scope of the great 
principle of our text that " the memory of the just is 
blessed, but the name of the wicked is a curse." 
This is the mystical communion of the saints, a very 
real thing in the Church's faith, even although few 
of the saints be known by name. They minister to 
the life of the Church, and are still, even as they 
were, the very salt of the earth. 

We can get an easy point of contact with this 
great thought by thinking of the saints we ourselves 
have known and perhaps loved and lost. We realise 
the truth of the benediction of our text ; for we have 
happy memories of some blessed dead who lived up- 
rightly in God's faith and fear. They have entered 



284 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

into an immortality of memory within us and of 
moral influence that can have no end while the world 
lasts. Thus the memory of the just is an inspiration 
as well as a happiness. It is a real aid to faith, per- 
haps the best aid we have ever had or can have ; for 
religion is life not creed, and only life can beget life. 
They of blessed memory help us; for they make it 
easy for us to believe in goodness and God and 
eternal life and heaven. They are even our last 
strand in the evidence for personal immortality; for 
we cannot believe that all that power of loving and all 
that wealth of grace and all that beauty of character 
have ceased. He lives a poor attenuated life who has 
never thrilled to the mystic union, who does not 
know that 

There are two societies aione on earth; 
The noble living and the noble dead. 

And sometimes even we see that they are not two but 
one great society, the one irrefragable bond of souls, 
the one Communion of the saints. The memory of 
the just is blessed, a blessing to us more than we can 
put into words, not only in stimulating us to emula- 
tion, not only exciting us and guiding us to all good, 
but also establishing us in faith in good and faith that 
we too have the same great vocation, to which we are 
called to walk worthy. 



IMMORTALITY OF MEMORY 285 



Many churches do not keep the so-called Saints' 
Days, having some well-grounded fears of the super- 
stition and false worship to which such celebrations 
tend to minister ; but there is one day in the Chris- 
tian year we might well keep, and that is All Saints' 
Day, when we reverently think of the blessed mem- 
ory of the just, when we celebrate the triumphs of 
faith and trophies of grace, and remember the 
glorious company of the Apostles, the goodly fellow- 
ship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the 
holy Church throughout all the world, the whole 
family in heaven and earth, named after the 
name of Jesus, all the endeavours after pure faith 
and holy living of the humble and true-hearted fol- 
lowers of Christ. It would not be just an empty cele- 
bration, doing idle homage to the great lives of de- 
parted saints. It might be a mighty inspiration for 
more heroism of faith and life. There is inspiration 
in the thought that we are not alone in our fitful en- 
deavours, but that we come in a great succession and 
are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. It 
is a source of strength to know that we are not ex- 
ceptional in our struggle, or sorrow, or joy ; that we, 
if we are faithful, are treading where the saints 
have trod ; that we belong to the ageless Church, and 
take our place among those who have fought the 



286 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

good fight and witnessed the good confession, in- 
spired by the blessed memory of the just. With all 
our petty divisions and small distinctions, it is some- 
thing to realise the unity of the spirit, and be held in 
the bonds of peace and love. 

And what higher ambition can there be for us than 
to be counted also among those whose memory smells 
sweet, who have helped not hindered the world in its 
steep ascent to God ? What nobler part to play than 
be a link, however humble, in that golden chain of 
testimony which binds the ages together? We all 
know in some form the truth of the other proverb, 
" A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's 
children." That is true even in a worldly sense, but 
the inheritance of good is not confined to such nat- 
ural descent. It is part of the life of everything 
that lives. It is part of the light that lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world. All personal am- 
bitions dwindle before the majesty of this desire to 
partake of the true posthumous fame, the true im- 
mortality of memory, to partake of the very influence 
of Christ, and be blessed with the memory of the 
just. " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord 
from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may 
rest from their labours; and their works do follow 
them." 



XXVI 



PAST AND PRESENT 

Say not thou, "What is the cause that the former days were 
letter than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning 
this. — Ecclesiastes vii. 10. 

The actual connection of these words of our text is 
quite in keeping with the tone and temper of the 
writer of this Book. He does not mean, at least as v 
the chief purpose of this rebuke, to glorify the pres- 
ent with its opportunities and possibilities at the ex- 
pense of the past. It would hardly be in accordance 
with the prevailing pessimism of the writer to strike 
here a hopeful and inspiring note. He is sick with 
life, and out of tune with the airy hopes of youth and 
its golden dream that the world is a fairer, sweeter 
place than it was in bygone days. We would not ex- 
pect this bright, cheerful philosophy from the man 
whose verdict on all earthly things is Vanity of vani- 
ties ; and we do not get it. The whole trend of his 
teaching is that life is illusive, and a man should not 
build his hopes too high, and look for permanence 
in any source of joy. Eather he advises moderation, 

287 



288 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 

to take things calmly, and make the most of life. To 
be over-sanguine is to court disappointment: to be 
over-righteous is to destroy happiness : to be over-evil 
is to be broken by inexorable law. Moderation is the 
great secret. 

So here, he deprecates anger, and hastiness of 
spirit. It is foolish to be angry, and patience is bet- 
ter than pride. Seneca said, " Anger is like rain : 
it breaks itself on what it falls." All worldly wis- 
dom preaches this, whatever it practises. You don't 
do any good and you only hurt yourself by losing your 
temper and getting over-excited about anything. It 
is a mark of folly to be hasty of spirit : " Anger 
resteth in the bosom of fools." Even to be angry 
about symptoms of the present and by comparison 
magnify the past, and ask petulantly, what is the 
cause that the former days were better than these? 
the wise man will not do that. " Thou dost not in- 
quire wisely concerning this." The wise man of this 
creed takes things as they are, and does not fret him- 
self with repining about good times gone, and with 
discontent about the present, and gloomy views about 
the future. He makes the most of what cannot be 
helped. He cultivates a cheerful pleasant tempera- 
ment. Not that he deceives himself with Utopian 
dreams that the world is improving and will soon be 



PAST AND PRESENT 



289 



a paradise — lie only just wants peace to enjoy what 
good there is, and won't let the present be lost by a 
barren worship of the past. The truth of this atti- 
tude (what truth there is in it), and the danger of it, 
are both too obvious for us to spend time enlarging on 
them. But we can see how, from this standpoint of 
somewhat cynical worldly-wisdom, the writer should 
exclaim, " Say not thou, What is the cause that the 
former days were better than these?" 

In any case, for higher and larger reasons than 
the writer's, the advice is good, and is applicable to 
us ; for it touches on a temptation which robs life of 
its full power. It is a common infirmity of old age, i 
but it is not confined to age, to disparage the present 
and to glorify the past. Especially in times of trial 
this is so : when the present is a wail it is natural to 
think that the past was a hallelujah. In reviewing 
times that are gone memory has a hallowing, soften- 
ing power. It is a merciful provision of our nature 
which makes us forget the pains and sorrows of the 
past, and when we do remember them sets them in a 
soft and tender light, letting us see some of the good 
which has come from them. And as the sorrows of 
the past seem diminished by distance, by a strange 
reversion the joys loom larger and finer. To a re- 
flective mind the pleasures of memory are sweeter 



290 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



than the pleasures of possession, or even the pleas- 
ures of anticipation. Of course it is largely a matter 
of temperament, but this must be the experience of 
many. In looking back on a journey we forget the 
many discomforts and little annoyances which marred 
perfect pleasure, or if we remember them it is to 
laugh at them and see the humorous side they had; 
and fond memory glorifies the great sights enjoyed. 
I am quite sure that the Matterhorn was not to me as 
grand, or Florence as fair, as I now picture them ; 
and am content to have it so. With the journey of 
our life the same is true. We paint our pictures with 
what perspective we please, and put ungainly things 
far in the background, or leave them out altogether. 
We look at the sorrows of the past through an in- 
* verted telescope which sends them further away and 
diminishes their size: we look at the joys through 
the magnifying end. 

And this tendency seen in our everyday life is also 
reflected on a larger scale in history. All old institu- 
tions gain allies for their continued existence in 
sentiment, and respect for what has displayed the 
quality of permanence. We judge of the past by 
what has come down to us of the past; and make 
unfavourable comparison of the present with it. We 
imagine all ancient architecture to be as the relics 



PAST AND PRESENT 



291 



that survive in magnificent cathedrals and abbeys 
and castles. We think of them all as belonging to 
the same period; and in our comparisons contrast 
the present point of time practically with all time. 
We forget among other things the greatly extended 
sphere for human activity now; and we forget that 
with the treasures of the past which we possess time 
has weeded out much that was inferior. In art and 
literature, as well as in architecture, the same unfair 
comparison is unconsciously made between what is 
produced now and what has been produced through- 
out all the ages. We ask almost indignantly where 
we have a philosopher like Aristotle, a poet like 
Homer, a dramatist like Shakespeare, a scientist like 
Newton, an artist like Eaphael, a sculptor like 
Michael Angelo; forgetting that you can hardly get 
another from all history to make a pair with any one 
of these. To be quite just, before you can say that 
the former times were better than these, you must 
fix on one particular time, and you must take the 
whole of it, every branch of knowledge, every sphere 
of activity, every condition of life ; and then, if you 
can, you must draw your completed contrast. 

If by the former time you mean some earlier 
period of your own life, are you taking into account 
all the facts, and not allowing prejudice or the nar- 



292 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



rowing vision of age to make jour judgment 
jaundiced ? It is a natural bias of the mind as we 
have seen, and in many respects a very beautiful 
thing, to glorify the past. The danger of it comes in 
when it makes light of the present, and destroys the 
healthful faith that would save the present from 
despair. When a lady complained to Mr. E. J. Mil- 
liken, long one of the most brilliant of the staff of 
Punch — as people have ever complained since the 
first number I suppose — that Punch is not so good as 
it used to be ; " No," assented Milliken, " it never 
was." To be a praiser of the past is often not only 
a harmless thing, but even it may be a great in- 
spiration to high endeavour ; for a nation for example 
to keep in mind some heroic period of their history 
when great deeds were done and great ideals pre- 
vailed; for poor, broken, oppressed Italy of Gari- 
baldi's day to dream of Eome and her great Empire, 
for the Swiss to remember their stern struggles for 
freedom, for England to point back to the days of 
good Queen Bess when the Spaniard was beaten back, 
and the bounds of knowledge were widened. All 
this is good if it be used as an inspiration to fire gen- 
erous ardour. But we must not let the past sit on us 
like an old man of the sea, choking us and fettering 
our movements. It is for this stupid purpose that the 



PAST. AND PRESENT 293 



past is generally used by the ordinary laudator 
temporis acti. The underlying idea is anything that 
now can be done must be feeble and not worth 
doing. Such an idea kills effort and robs life of dig- 
nity. It paralyses the present and mutilates the 
future. In this sense it is a word apt and oppor- 
tune, " Say not, the former days were better than 
these." 

On the one hand we have ever with us the man 
whose attitude to life is summed up in the dictum, 
Whatever is is right, who opposes change of all sorts, 
and is quite content with the actual state of affairs. | 
On the other hand some adopt the opposite, and 
equally false, statement as a motto, Whatever is is 
wrong. Strange though it may appear, the two posi- 
tions may be the fruit of the selfsame spirit, and 
have their origin in the same point of view. In their 
essence they have both their cause in want of faith. 
The man who is content with the present does not see 
that it exists to be carried forward into a nobler 
future ; and the man who disparages the present and 
glorifies the past does not see that the very same 
| causes are at work, that the present is really the out- 
come and fruition of the past which he praises, and 
if he be right the poverty of the present stultifies the 
past he loves. And both attitudes, that of the un- 



294 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



reasoning conservative who will not look forward, 
and that of the sentimental medievalist who will 
only look back, deprive us of the hope and vigour to 
make onr days true and noble. Things cannot be let 
alone. They will change in any case, and by them- 
selves will change for the worse. Time changes 
things with your will or in spite of it. Things be- 
come the worse for wear ; and no achievements of the 
past can take from us the task of to-day. " Time is 
the great innovator," says Bacon, " and if time of 
course alter things to the worse, and wisdom and 
counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall 
be the end ? " It is a pertinent question to put to 
those who would tie our hands by senile idolatry of 
the past, or make us mark time in puerile com- 
placency with the present. 

In the days when men were fonder of abstract 
discussions than they are now, there used to be a great 
controversy among philosophers and theologians as 
to whether it was true to speak of the perfectibility 
or the corruptibility of human nature. In the one 
case it was held that the race tended towards 
I progress, a stately and regular march of mind : in the 
other case that the race tended to settle and sink. I 
would hold a brief for neither. Neither is true, and 
both may be true. It all depends on the forces that 



PAST AND PRESENT 



295 



are brought to bear on life. Life is ductible, elastic, 
and takes shape according to the forces that act on it. 
To have the manly, hopeful attitude that I would 
commend to you instead of the despairing one of our 
text, we do not need to believe in the perfectibility 
of the race: we only need to believe in its un- 
provability under the right conditions. It does not 
mean the cheap optimism, the easy-going faith that 
things must go on somehow all right, that all is for 
the best, and every change is progress. When we 
know the facts of history and the facts of life we are 
kept from braggart comparisons between ourselves 
and our fathers. We see cycles of degeneracy, 
periods of barrenness, times when good seems van- 
ished out of the earth. We see that there is no innate 
principle in the world raising it ever higher without 
effort or hindrance. We see that progress has to be 
bought by blood. We see that every gain of the past 
has to be acquired at great price, and has to be kept 
at the point of the sword. The shallow rose-coloured 
views about perfectibility, so common in the writers 
at the period of the French Eevolution, are false, 
even though to-day these views are expressed in 
scientific dress, under names like evolution and such- 
like. It does not follow that our days are better than 
former days. Say not that. Thou dost not speak 



296 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



wisely concerning this. Yon must show that it is so 
by larger thought and grander build of character and 
nobler life-. 

But our days are better than former days in this, 
that we have greater opportunities, to us have come 
the wisdom of the ancients, the ripe fruit of experi- 
ence, advantages of knowledge, wider outlets for 
every gift. All this will be none avail if we lose 
faith. We cannot lose faith in God, and keep faith 
in ourselves and our future. Without faith we have 
no sure guarantee that will make effort purposeful, 
and we will sigh for a mythical golden age lying be- 
hind us as a race. The golden age is before us if 
God leads us on. We prepare for the coming of His 
Kingdom when we make His will ours, and serve 
His ends, in which are bound up the true end of 
man. With such faith we need not look back upon 
former days longingly, upheld in our own day by the 
thought of God's presence. We face our own task, 
and take up our own burden with hope and self-re- 
spect. Said Moliere, " The ancients are the ancients ; 
and we are the people of to-day." We need a manly 
faith in our own destiny, the faith that God has a 
place and a purpose for us — even us the people of 
to-day, as He had for the ancients. 

Christ is to us the pledge of that, and the promise 



PAST AND PRESENT 297 

of it. In the faith of Him we take large views in 
space and in time. 

Say not the struggle nought availeth, 
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 
And not by eastern windows only, 
When daylight comes, comes in the light, 
In front the siin climbs slow, how slowly, 
But westward look, the land is bright. 



XXVII 



THE PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT 

/ will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their 
thoughts. — Jebemtah vi. 19. 

To the prophets punishment was never a mere 
misfortune, an adventitious thing that came to some 
and missed others as by chance, some hard lot that 
befell a certain number who did not have the luck 
to escape, as falling stones strike individuals of a 
crowd by haphazard. It had an essential relation to 
life, the result of cause and effect as universal as 
physical law. It was not fortune ; it was fate. Not 
fate in the sense of a blind, resistless, remorseless 
force ; but the result of purpose, reason, law. They 
traced everything past the external appearance to 
the inward moral source, which alone gives consist- 
ence and true meaning to human life. They, no 
more than modern science, could conceive of any- 
thing as causeless. But they were not content to 
find out secondary causes and rest there. They saw 
the will of God as the inspiring force of nature, the 



PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT 299 



hand of God shaping history, the law of God ruling 
all life. 

Jeremiah pronounces judgment in the name of 
God, and points to outraged law, to wicked deeds, 
to disregard of the moral conditions which alone 
make life possible. He speaks with certitude as of 
a man who sees into the sources of things and will 
not abate his warning because the appearance at the 
time seems to give the lie to his fears. The rulers 
of the people took roseate views of the situation, and 
said, " Peace, peace," deceiving their own hearts and 
the hearts of others with pleasant dreams that all 
was well, and lulled themselves into a sense of secu- 
rity. Jeremiah saw that there could be no peace on 
such conditions. It was a frivolous age, when men 
thought to silence the thunder by shutting their 
ears; and when God's watchmen said, "Hearken to 
the sound of the trumpet," the trumpet that pre- 
sages doom, they said, " We will not hearken." To 
people in such a frivolous mood punishment when 
it came would be looked on as calamity: they would 
think themselves the sport of cruel fortune. Where 
the prophet saw law, they would only see chance: 
where the prophet saw cause, they would only see 
accident. So, he strives to enlighten them and con- 
vince them that God's judgment was based on prin- 



300 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



ciple, the harvest of the seed sown. " Hear, 0 
heaven: behold I will bring evil upon this people, 
even the fruit of their thoughts." 

This inevitable consequence of cause and effect is 
the basis of all prophetic writing, and rewards and 
punishments are regarded as the product of the ac- 
tual state of moral life. From the outside stand- 
point judgment is the result of conduct: from the 
inner standpoint it is the result of character. Con- 
duct is character unfolding itself; and character is 
the way a man thinks. From the one standpoint 
judgment is the fruit of men's deeds ; from the other 
it is the fruit of their thoughts. Isaiah puts the 
same message thus : — " Say ye to the righteous, that 
it shall be well with him : for they shall eat the fruit 
of their doings. Woe unto the wicked! it shall be 
ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be 
given him." Jeremiah's statement is the same, only 
carried a little deeper to its source. Our destiny is 
the fruit of our doings and the reward of our hands ; 
and our doing is the fruit of our thoughts. The 
common feature of both messages is that judgment 
is not something superimposed on life, a sentence 
arbitrarily passed on a man. Punishment is not 
retribution exacted from a man by a superior power 
outside him; it is the necessary and inevitable con- 



PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT 301 



sequence flowing from the condition. You see what 
a keen and deep diagnosis the prophet makes when 
he defines the impending national punishment as the 
fruit of their thoughts. 

It is the fashion to speak of thoughts as of little 
importance in the review of a life. The opinions a 
man has, the creed he holds, the way he looks at 
things, the colour and bent of his mind, these are 
supposed to count for very little in determining re- 
ligious value. Morality is made the standard of re- 
ligion ; and morality is taken to be the things a man 
does, and the things he refrains from doing. That 
is a very outside and wooden way of defining moral- 
ity. The spiritual test of an act is its motive. There 
may be right acts with wrong motives : there may be 
even wrong acts with right motives. Eobert Burns 
was a much better theologian and a better moralist, 
when he said, 

The heart's aye, 
The part aye, 

That mak's us right or wrang. 

Legality is not always equity for the simple rea- 
son that except in special cases it is not possible to 
make sure of motives, and so the law has to content 
itself with acts. But we know from experience how 
the best-intentioned man will sometimes blunder into 



302 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



mistakes; and we also know that many an irre- 
proachable deed may be damned by the cunning or 
deceit or crooked purpose at the bottom of it. 

Christ's teaching was full of this inwardness of 
aspect. As opposed to the formalists, who had buried 
the spirit under a mass of outward observances and 
made the law of none effect by their traditions, He 
showed that men were judged by the attitude of 
their hearts. It was held that if a man did not kill 
he was guiltless of breaking the commandment: but 
the Master taught that if hate was harboured in the 
mind the sin of murder was committed. With im- 
peccable and respectable conduct, He showed that 
there could be adultery committed in the heart. 
Sinful deeds there were in plenty, but the root of 
the sin lay in the corrupted will, the depraved heart, 
the evil thought. Defilement did not mean the 
omission to perform any of the idle ceremonies, of 
which the Pharisees made so much : but out of a de- 
filed heart came the things that defiled the man. We 
judge by the eye, by our common rough-and-ready 
standards, and from our limitations it cannot be oth- 
erwise to some extent : but God's judgment is not so 
limited. It is the fruit of our thoughts. 

Again, it must be remembered that in the long 
run as we think so will we act. Thoughts issue in 



PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT 303 



speech and in deeds. The whole stream of life is 
coloured by the colour of the source. The bent of a 
man's mind is the bent of his life. The way he looks 
at God and the world and life must determine his 
every act. Our Lord's statement is a general state- 
ment of fact, that " a good man out of the good treas- 
ure of the heart bringeth forth good things; and 
an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth 
evil things." There never was a more absurd and 
inept idea than the common one that it does not 
matter much what a man thinks and believes. By 
comparison nothing else matters. It is true that a 
man may hold certain opinions and speculations in a 
loose fashion without these affecting his life ; but that 
is because these opinions are not his true creed. 
They are really outside his mind. If they entered 
into the fibre and tissue of his thinking they would 
represent the exact man. We speak of convictions 
when we only mean vague impressions : we speak of 
creed when we only mean surface views taken on 
trust floating lightly on what we call our minds. But 
below the stream of what we show to the world there 
flows strong and deep the current of what we really 
think and believe: and that is the measure of the 
man. 

For example, it is the accepted cant of the day that 



304 



THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



a man can hold any views lie likes about God and 
human life (or for that part no views at all) with- 
out making much difference. It is the most imbecile 
of all popular fallacies. The character of your God 
will be your own character. What you really believe 
about the government of the world regulates your 
whole conduct. Will it make no difference whether 
you think life to be a medley of chance, or the or- 
dered march of wise and loving purpose ? Will it 
make no difference whether you look upon the su- 
preme ruler of the universe as blind to moral issues, 
or as an unjust judge, or as a hard man who gathers 
where he hath not strawed, or as just and holy and 
merciful ? Will it make no difference whether He is 
to you the Despot of heaven or the Heavenly Father ? 
That is if you really believe ? Instead of creed be- 
ing of no importance, it is all-important: instead of 
your thoughts not counting, nothing else counts. As 
a man thinketh in his heart so is he — that, no more 
and no less. Your life is the fruit of your thoughts. 

We are tempted to miss the inwardness of life and 
religion, and so have shallow views of sin and pun- 
ishment and redemption. Sin is not merely mis- 
take, the neglect to observe certain rules. It is a 
spiritual thing, and its roots go deep, past flesh and 
blood down to the very fountain of life. Sin is the 



PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT 305 



mother of sins; and that is why redemption cannot 
come by any process of pruning and cutting. Sin is 
the foul creature from which springs the hateful 
brood which we call sins ; and her nest is in the heart. 
So repentance is made the gate to life because it 
touches the source. It means a sorrow that turns 
the heart from its old loves and lusts, and gives the 
life a new direction. It means a change of route and 
thus a change of destination. It means the bringing 
forth of new fruit, the fruit of our new thoughts. 
When will we learn, therefore, that judgment is not 
arbitrary or incidental or capricious ? It is self -reg- 
istering, automatic, the harvest of our life. Conduct 
we have seen is the outgrowth of character ; and char- 
acter conditions destiny. To this people — to all peo- 
ple God brings the fruit of their thoughts. It is 
your reward or your punishment; your heaven or 
your hell. ~No change of lot, no alteration of outward 
condition, can make essential difference. " What 
matter where," asks Milton's Satan, " if I be still 
the same ? " 

The wages of being good is not some recompense 
added on like a perquisite to a salary. Its highest 
wages is goodness itself. The recompense of being 
holy is holiness : the reward of being pure is purity. 
The punishment of sin is itself, its own loathly; 



306 THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE 



deathly self. The harvest of the flesh is itself, cor- 
ruption. The penalty of a depraved mind is deprav- 
ity. The retribution of an impure heart is impurity. 
Who will deliver you from the body of that death? 
" I will bring upon this people the fruit of their 
thoughts." Well might the Proverb say with wist- 
ful solemnity, " My son, keep thine heart with all 
diligence ; for out of it are the issues of life." 

Who is sufficient for these things ? Who can guard 
his thoughts and keep a watch, a sleepless watch at 
the citadel of life ? There is no safety for a man 
except by giving up his heart to the keeping of a 
stronger than himself, submitting his thoughts to 
the very thought of God, yielding his will to be con- 
formed to the will of God, making surrender of his 
whole being till he is truly God-possessed, bringing 
into captivity every thought to the obedience of 
Christ. It is a process, including the whole work, 
the life-long work of sanctification ; but it begins as 
an act of will, an act of faith, opening the door of the 
heart to the gracious Master who stands knocking for 
entrance. Where He has possession there is no room 
for any kind of evil. It cannot live in His presence. 
Evil lives with us because we have not made full sur- 
render of ourselves to Him. We know in fragmen- 
tary form how it is possible for one man to dominate 



PRINCIPLE OF JUDGMENT 307 



another by his personality, till the other thinks his 
thought, speaks his words, performs his will. So, 
it is possible to willingly let Christ dominate onr 
every power that the same mind as was in Him is in 
us, His very way of looking at things is our way, 
His life is our life. That is the Christian ideal and 
the Christian task to have Christ formed in us. If 
He were, could there be for us a fearful looking 
forward to of judgment? If His pure thoughts 
were our thoughts, could we ever be afraid to see the 
fruit of our thoughts ? 



THE QUINN ft BOD EN CO. PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J. 



,0 o 



